help on cutting bricks

[jersey]

this may be a dumb question but how do you cut the bricks for the floor in a curve. is this done with repetative cuts and then grinding the curve???? help please and thanks

[Les]

Originally Posted by jersey

. is this done with repetative cuts and then grinding the curve???? help please and thanks

Yes. You can slightly spin the brick as you feed. The brick is pretty soft so you can get a decent curve.

[Faith In Virginia]

Yes you can use repetitive cuts that's what I did. You talked about grinding the curve well I don't know about that. If you think about it for a moment the inside and outside of the oven is round in shape yet this round shape is made from a bunch of straight lines. So even if you grind to a perfect circle the square brick that are use will have something sticking out somewhere.

Are you building your floor so that the floor is inside the first run of bricks or will your first run set on top of your floor?

[jersey]

thanks for replys. i was planning on building the floor inside any thoughts on if this is better, harder, or should i put the first course on top of the floor

[Faith In Virginia]

I put mine on the inside. If I ever have a problem with a brick I can take it out and fix it. But you can do that with both ways just if you have the bricks sitting on top of the floor the edge pieces would be more difficult to fix. Your call on that one.

This is my floor but keep in mind I built this as a bread oven so I have lots of extra thermal mass.

[jersey]

wow your floor looks great. so you have know mortar between the floor and the first course (at the bottom inside) and this just gets filled in with ash.

[Faith In Virginia]

Correct. First I put down the floor with the fire clay and sand mixture. Then my first run is
standing up. So my first run is a full brick standing on end. But that is just the way I decided to go. There are many variations to this so you will need to work out what is best for you.

[GianniFocaccia]

A number of builders will place their first course directly on their firebrick floor. The reason for this is that 100% of the dome weight will rest on that initial course perimeter and by placing it on the floor you spread the weight over a larger area. It is also an uncommon occurrance to have to replace a floor brick. If you build your oven this way, the exactness of your floor curve can be more relaxed.

[Faith In Virginia]

True what you don't see on my oven is that I also have a flat layer of brick under my oven floor so that is what my dome and floor is sitting on. It gives me about 7 inches of brick in the floor.

[Pisani]

FIV,
By Using 7" of bricks for the floor do you find it takes longer to heat up the oven?


pisani