Tapered bricks/ Standard bricks

[PerryPizza]

Whilst looking for firebricks this morning I found a supplier who has tapered bricks as well as regular bricks, for pretty much the same price per given volume. I imagine I'd use less mortar with the tapered bricks, which is always nice... though maybe it'll be harder to construct because of that fact? For the dome I'm unsure whether to go for regular, tapered, or a mixture... anyone have an opinion?

[Dutchoven]

Tapered bricks will generally make for a stronger dome...as for a mixture that would depend on what size you are building and whether or not all tapered bricks would get you to that size...I say go for the tapered...
Best
Dutch

[dmun]

If your dimensions are correct, those taper bricks would form about a nine inch radius (229mm) inside arch. This would make a nice entry arch, but a really tiny dome.

[PerryPizza]

I could stagger the tapered brick with the standard brick....

[Abear]

I'm building mine with tapered bricks and it was a breeze! I used considerably less mortar (none between the arch bricks) and it made a really tight fit. If you can get them, go for it!

[PerryPizza]

I've just spent the afternoon with a large piece of cardboard doing some full scale drawings working out how many bricks to buy - I've decided to use the standard brick as I'm not sure how easy it will be to construct the oven without using a wedge of mortar to 'glue' the bricks in place. Anyone interested, for a 80cm internal oven using a course of full (22cm) soldier bricks and a dome height of 40cm I've cautiously calculated I'll need 99 bricks, which is handy as I can round it up to 100 (this is just for the dome, I already have the floor sorted) - the total then is 135 (22.5cm x 10.5cm x 5cm) bricks for my little oven. I'll let you know if I've got it wrong!