Mobile refractory pizza oven build/design

[Jeremy M.]

I have cruised the FB forum and seen many good builds. I will be starting mine soon, and want to cover some design considerations. I am going for a lightweight/durable oven that will work well on a trailer. My trailer will be an old truck bed trailer. Here's what I am thinking. Build a metal frame to hold a 4 foot by 4 foot metal tray made of 3/16 metal and 3 inches deep. Lay FB board in the tray. Place 4.5 by 9 inch fire brick directly on the FB board. The firebrick will stick up about an inch above the tray. The oven will be refractory cement over a sand form, possibly in two pours: 1. with a short vertical wall similar to Joey's and then 2. the dome over a sand form. I want to make the refractory pour as thin as possible. The refractory is the heaviest/most expensive componenet. Can I go 2" thick? Needles or no needles, and how much if I do need them. Then a single layer of FB blanket. What is recommended to go over the FB blanket as a final layer: percrete? stucco?. Does this seem to hit the right balance of strength/weight/insulation/mass/heat up time. Any advice is much appreciated.

[pete zapie]

hello all, i too have been lurking the fourm for a few months and jeremy these are my exact thoughts too ,so i sure hope this thread takes off ! I do know one thing im gonna need two ovens one on wheels and one for the back yard
like dinos maybe with some david s modifications............ but the portable... yes light, inexpensive, and primarily for pizzas. what do you think about the ovens they use at veraci pizza, they look pretty basic and seem to work in a professional enviroment?

also GREAT FORUM THANKS FOR BEING HERE GUYS ...I went from thinking about an oven to knowing that i would be building two after a week on this forum thanks for the confidence!!

[aurik]

I saw this on TV last night -- there's actually a guy in Seattle that does that very thing. He's got a clay pizza oven on a trailer that he tows to the weekend market. People have claimed he makes the best pizza in the US.

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The show also mentioned some of the problems he had with the oven (cracks because he didn't let it cure properly, had to replace the axle on his trailer because it wasn't beefy enough, had to get a bigger trailer hitch because it wasn't beefy enough....), but people rave about the pizza.

[david s]

I'd be concerned about the steel tray first up. It will tend to trap moisture and probably start rusting. I think a series of rails using 2" angle iron with about 4" spacing would be a better solution.