Le oven fin!

When I last updated I was finishing the walls. Here is a shot of the loose vermiculite insulation that covers the top, sides and back of the oven. It is built up a bit higher than shown here. There is also an angle iron that supports the cement board roof I put on in the next picture.

This is me putting the roof on. Fun stuff.

I stuccoed the block. Not the most fun thing I've ever done.

It is finally pizza time. Oven is insulated and the roof is on and we couldn't wait any longer. Our first fire for cooking. I gave it an hour and a half of burn time.

Getting the pizza off of the paddle is a little more complicated than it would seem. It requires more flour/corn starch than I thought at first. Eventually I had it off and cooking.

Initially I was cooking with the coals left over from my initial burn. I hadn't received my temperature gun yet so I think I overestimated the temperature in the oven. I put a piece of wood on and things got going.

The first pizza pie. I made a few mistakes with this first go around. I built the fire and pushed it to the back of the oven almost immediately. I think I should have left it burn in the middle of the oven to get the floor extra hot. I also had pretty thick dough which compounded the problem of low floor heat and left a pizza with half cooked dough and crusty cheese. Still very edible though.

This was the second attempt a few days later. I think it was a 100% improvement in all areas.

This is what she looks like as of today. Mostly painted and we got some torches to mount on the front. We were going for the Spanish Colonial style. Looks pretty good to me.

Yeah, just got even cooler.

Le Oven deux

Back to the oven. I have made a bit of progress in the last few weeks. My original intention of just finishing before it got too hot to work outside was altered when we decided to host our family Easter dinner and involve the oven. Here is the progress to date.

At this point I finished the dome and brought the roof down to the doorway as you can see. The bricks coming out from the door way are to support the outer arch and chimney.

Here is the outer arch completed. I used something called a "soldier arch" which I guess is named because the bricks are arranged standing upright. I also built the walls out from the arch to add support to the arch and chimney.

Here is another picture with the walls built out and the base of the chimney.

Next came the insulation. Around the body of the oven there is a thick layer of aluminum foil. This is a way to keep the 4" of steel reinforced concrete from bonding to the bricks of the oven. As the oven heats the bricks will expand at a slightly different rate to the concrete and the allows "slippage" so the concrete doesn't crack.

Here is another view prior to pouring the concrete. The steel wire is held up off the foil by a couple of inches allowing good bonding by the concrete.

 After the concrete had cured I continued working on the chimney. This was by far the most difficult part of the job. There is basically no instruction of how to build the chimney up over an open area. I spent a bit of time just thinking about what to do and then figured I would just start building. Fortunately I had poured a small concrete slab across the doorway which gave me some extra area to build on. I tried to interweave the bricks until I reached the width of the final chimney and then went straight up. It isn't too pretty but it worked.

 This is just the walls built up. It will house a loose vermiculite insulator.

Today, unable to wait any longer, I built my first fire. I just built a small fire to make sure the smoke goes where it is supposed to and start the series of small fires to make sure everything expands and contracts without cracking.

I have to say, this is pretty awesome. Next time...pizza pictures!