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Thread: I am building a wood fired (pizza) oven.

  1. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by mad cow View Post
    ???
    You got me there.
    I have got a good excuse though, I'm still dead from mixing concrete yesterday. Will you forgive my mistake... Of course the Parthenon is in Greece. Pantheon... These things get confusing when you're tired. I should be ashamed of myself though, I had both latin and greek in high school.



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  3. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by luctor-et-emergo View Post
    Posting here is already paying back big time ! I am amongst great people. Thanks.


    Complex things aren't as difficult as they seem sometimes. I had trouble with algebra because they used to have such weird ways of teaching that letters can be numbers. Everything fell in it's place when I was like "well that seems logical".

    Domes are usually not hemispherical because that's not self supporting, the trick with parabolic/elliptical domes is that they are self supporting. The load from the top section is carried down all the way through the dome into the base below. This means that the structure is very strong, the best example of this is the Pantheon in Rome. It's the oldest and still the largest unreinforced concrete dome ever built. I've been there, it's big.

    Yes a true dome is your strongest.

    It concerned me a little at first you talking about a parabola shape in your pizza oven.

    Maybe the documentary I'm thinking of was a dome. Then all you would need was a fixed eye loop at your starting level to stretch a line from to know just where to mortar your brick.

    I'm pretty sure it was one anchor point more complex though.

    If the walls of the oven are elliptic you could use two screws and a sting to know where to set your bricks. As the wall arose you would have to raise the level of your guide screws with the level of the walls. Once you reached where you wanted to start your dome you would need to set two eye bolts at the level the dome started and use them with a line to set bricks.

    The documentary was a huge dome. I think maybe the grout could have been what made the angle changes you needed in the ellipse. Your going to have very large bricks scale wise and the angles may be a problem.

    Another thought came to mind. Maybe calculate out our parabola oven to a size and shape that excepted two spherical domes.That might look kind of sexy on a pizza oven but I'm not sure how it would draw.



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  5. #33
    Quote Originally Posted by luctor-et-emergo View Post
    Thanks! You're all invited for pizza when it's finished. Hell of a trip though.

    Btw, Bryan, FornoBravo is a great resource. I'm not a member there but a lot of my reading has been on those forums. Especially regarding the high temp mortar. Although, I'm not going to do what most are doing there.
    Stick to it! I'm planning on taking the kid to Europe in the next 7-10 years. I've only been to Austria, Spain and England, but there's many more places I want to go and take her with me. I could even try to bring you some NYC pizzeria yeast--it's allegedly some of the best in the world.

  6. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by klamath View Post
    I love tough sourdough French bread but it requires the heavy kneading. I am watching out for a heavy Hobart dough mixer that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Beings that I plan to bake a large batch and then freeze it, the heat holding design seems to make sense.
    I know what you mean about the Refractory material. A few years back I built a high temp foundry for melting bronze and iron and it can be unforgiving.
    Keep your eye out for restaurants and bakeries going out of business, you can buy used equipment pretty reasonably at those sales. You may also want to visit a few used restaurant supply stores and you may be able to negotiate with them. If they have a lot of them make them an offer and carry cash (don't feel weird about asking for a cash price). Good luck finding a Hobart, they're the bomb!

  7. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by Carson View Post
    Yes a true dome is your strongest.

    It concerned me a little at first you talking about a parabola shape in your pizza oven.

    Maybe the documentary I'm thinking of was a dome. Then all you would need was a fixed eye loop at your starting level to stretch a line from to know just where to mortar your brick.

    I'm pretty sure it was one anchor point more complex though.

    If the walls of the oven are elliptic you could use two screws and a sting to know where to set your bricks. As the wall arose you would have to raise the level of your guide screws with the level of the walls. Once you reached where you wanted to start your dome you would need to set two eye bolts at the level the dome started and use them with a line to set bricks.

    The documentary was a huge dome. I think maybe the grout could have been what made the angle changes you needed in the ellipse. Your going to have very large bricks scale wise and the angles may be a problem.

    Another thought came to mind. Maybe calculate out our parabola oven to a size and shape that excepted two spherical domes.That might look kind of sexy on a pizza oven but I'm not sure how it would draw.
    For actually constructing the dome people either use forms to use as guides when applying the next course of bricks, or they make a supporting structure that they mortar onto. To get the neatest dome I think the best way is to make a piece of wood that lays on the oven floor, in the center you have a pivoting arm that rotates and can go up and down. It also needs to be extendable, for instance with a bolt. That way you can set it for each course and just lay the bricks up to it. (not my idea.)

    I'm not sure where you're going with that last part. Do you mean a dome stretched like a soccer stadium ? Those exist.


    Quote Originally Posted by amy31416 View Post
    Stick to it! I'm planning on taking the kid to Europe in the next 7-10 years. I've only been to Austria, Spain and England, but there's many more places I want to go and take her with me. I could even try to bring you some NYC pizzeria yeast--it's allegedly some of the best in the world.
    There are still a couple places in Europe that I want to visit. At some point in time I'd like to go to the arctic circle to do a winter survival course. I'm not the type that goes sightseeing . Austria has been one of my favorite countries, good food, nice people and lots of fun in summer and winter.

    I don't know too much about yeast except there are a lot of different species. So far I've been using mostly bread yeast that's sold at a bakers supply store, I buy it by the pound, it works well and tastes good. But trying yeast that has been used in pizza's for generations would be totally awesome. I don't think we really have any pizza places like that here.

  8. #36
    Would you mind posting your pizza dough recipe? Mine ends up tasting like bread, yuk.

  9. #37
    Quote Originally Posted by Suzanimal View Post
    Would you mind posting your pizza dough recipe? Mine ends up tasting like bread, yuk.
    I have simplified my dough although it takes time to develop.

    The flour I use is classified as 'pastry flour' in the US.
    I use, 2% salt 2% yeast and 65% water.

    I use cool water, I first let the yeast develop a bit in the water for half an hour. No sugar.
    Then I add that to the flour and knead it until it looks like a pretty good dough, then add the salt and knead more until it's mixed in well with the dough.

    Then I rest my dough for 15-30 minutes with a damp cloth over it. Then I weigh each piece of dough and roll them into a ball. Then they go into the fridge for 24 hours to develop. It's important that the dough does not get warm during kneading, so don't knead too heavily. This is a cold rise, it's different.

    When you're using the dough let it sit outside the fridge for half an hour to an hour so it gets to the right elasticity. I use semolina to keep my dough from sticking, it adds a bit of texture to the crust without changing the flavor.
    Last edited by luctor-et-emergo; 06-24-2014 at 10:49 AM.

  10. #38
    Subscribed to this thread!

  11. #39

  12. #40
    Quote Originally Posted by Suzanimal View Post
    Keep your eye out for restaurants and bakeries going out of business, you can buy used equipment pretty reasonably at those sales. You may also want to visit a few used restaurant supply stores and you may be able to negotiate with them. If they have a lot of them make them an offer and carry cash (don't feel weird about asking for a cash price). Good luck finding a Hobart, they're the bomb!
    There is kitchenAid and then you have a real machine. Hobart. Thanks for the tips. Do you have a business or do you just have a Hobart mixer for home use?
    War; everything in the world wrong, evil and immoral combined into one and multiplied by millions.



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  14. #41
    Quote Originally Posted by phill4paul View Post
    Subscribed to this thread!
    Cool!

    Quote Originally Posted by Bastiat's The Law View Post
    Thread is making me hungry
    Me too. I should make more pizza.


    Here are a few more pics from building.

    An outline of what it's going to be.


    Then I dug a trench for the foundation.


    Some of the rubble I found while digging, it's absolutely horrible. People have lived here for a couple hundred years and left a mess! A lot of foundation stones from a possible previous house. Didn't take me as long as I feared it would, I was lucky. There was no concrete anywhere.

  15. #42
    When I made the concrete form for my workshop I made it in it's final place. This one being significantly smaller I figured I could make it in one piece and then lower it into my trench. This worked fine and it took a bit of standing on, bashing and pushing to get it straight and level. Luckily there was just enough play on the whole thing to allow for easy adjustment.


    Then extra supports were placed to make sure the concrete isn't going to break the mold. Concrete is pretty dense and it can easily break unsupported wooden molds. Since these are all short spans it shouldn't be a big risk.


    Then the rebar is added, because this is an octagon it's pretty difficult to make a very nice rebar cage since I don't have welding equipment. I only had bending irons. I opted to make a U shaped (sort of) piece going all around. Supported by concrete stones below and spacer rings to keep the rebar from touching the mold itself. (there's more rebar coming.)


    Bottom section nearly done. The sand at the bottom of the mold was compacted by ramming, the interior mold is held 8 apart inches from the top and bottom of the exterior mold, since the exterior mold comes inward 6 inches at the top the interior mold is at around 105 degrees. These pieces are not even attached to each other, the wooden spacers and concrete stones at the bottom keep them in place. Once the concrete is in, the wooden spacers are removed and they aren't going anywhere. I used as much of the debris I found to backfill the middle part, afterwards I put some rammed sand over it and then a layer of concrete stones, to fill it up some more. The slab itself is 5 inches thick.


    Exciting !
    Last edited by luctor-et-emergo; 06-24-2014 at 03:05 AM.

  16. #43
    Great, 3:45am and I'm salivating over pizza pics.
    “One may come to the aid of another being unlawfully arrested, just as he may where one is being assaulted, molested, raped or kidnapped. Thus it is not an offense to liberate one from the unlawful custody of an officer, even though he may have submitted to such custody, without resistance.” (Adams v. State, 121 Ga. 16, 48 S.E. 910).

  17. #44
    I didn't really make pictures during mixing and casting, it took me a little over 6 hours in total to complete the job. Alone, it would have been much more comfortable doing this job together with someone. But I started so I had to finish.

    Here's a giant vibrator to get the air out of the concrete, making it more dense.


    There's the finished slab. It got a little dark by then. Overall it was a long day. A couple hours preparation, 6 hours of hard work and then 2 more hours of cleaning and smoothening out the slab.


    I sure hope hard work pays off. I could use some tasty pizza's when this is done.
    Last edited by luctor-et-emergo; 06-24-2014 at 02:27 PM.

  18. #45
    Quote Originally Posted by luctor-et-emergo View Post

    I sure hope hard work pays off. I could use some tasty pizza's when this is done.
    Nice, pretty soon you'll be enjoying those yummy pizzas and the rest of us will be sitting here all sad and jealous with our broke ass Dominos.


  19. #46
    I had pizza cooked in a cob oven, it was delicious.
    Insanity should be defined as trusting the government to solve a problem they caused in the first place. Please do not go insane!

  20. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by Czolgosz View Post
    Great, 3:45am and I'm salivating over pizza pics.
    Whats stopping you ?

    Quote Originally Posted by Suzanimal View Post
    Nice, pretty soon you'll be enjoying those yummy pizzas and the rest of us will be sitting here all sad and jealous with our broke ass Dominos.

    Already happening.. ^^

    Quote Originally Posted by TonySutton View Post
    I had pizza cooked in a cob oven, it was delicious.
    Nice, I don't know if there's a big difference between a brick or cob oven, I suspect it's a minor difference.

  21. #48
    Love reading these kind of threads.

    Are you going to make fire on normal concrete? Material that you are using has to have specific properties regarding heating and expansion.

    One night we were around fire that we made on concrete. We drank beer, eat BBQ-ed meat... Then: BOOOM... Sparks went 5 meters high, ember falling all over the place and on us. Everyone got hit. Everyone started running away into dark. Funny as hell.

    When we were making fireplace we invited friend of ours that is old (really old) stonemason and he explained why you need special kind of mortar/plaster, bricks and other materials that are suited for high heat and temperature oscillations. Otherwise you will have cracks, bricks coming off or small explosions when concrete has nowhere to expand.
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    Quote Originally Posted by orenbus View Post
    If I had to answer this question truthfully I'd probably piss a lot of people off lol, Barrex would be a better person to ask he doesn't seem to care lol.




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  23. #49
    Quote Originally Posted by Barrex View Post
    Love reading these kind of threads.

    Are you going to make fire on normal concrete? Material that you are using has to have specific properties regarding heating and expansion.

    One night we were around fire that we made on concrete. We drank beer, eat BBQ-ed meat... Then: BOOOM... Sparks went 5 meters high, ember falling all over the place and on us. Everyone got hit. Everyone started running away into dark. Funny as hell.

    When we were making fireplace we invited friend of ours that is old (really old) stonemason and he explained why you need special kind of mortar/plaster, bricks and other materials that are suited for high heat and temperature oscillations. Otherwise you will have cracks, bricks coming off or small explosions when concrete has nowhere to expand.
    Sounds like you did have a lot of fun ! I tried to contain fires with whatever I had as a kid, including concrete. I know what you're talking about with exploding bricks.

    I'll be using firebricks for the actual dome, these can go up to much higher temperatures than the oven will ever attain. At least are supposed to. And the mortar itself, most people mix regular portland cement, sand, lime and fireclay. Fireclay is something you can buy at every hardware store in the US it seems but at none here in Europe. It took me a long time to find what it's called here, finally I found that clay from Limoges (France) is used to bake fireclay sinks, so I guess that's fireclay. I can buy it in 50lb bags (dry powder), a bit more expensive than fireclay in the US but I don't need that much.

    I want to use aluminum cement instead of portland cement because this is better at higher temperatures, it makes a true refractory mortar. It's harder to work with than portland cement and supposedly lime 'sets it off' right away so probably no lime. I'll test out a couple of mixes before I'm committing.
    Last edited by luctor-et-emergo; 06-25-2014 at 01:41 AM.

  24. #50
    That is some dedication, can you make anything else cool in there?

    I think I'd rather build a meat smoker, but pizza is pretty tasty..
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  25. #51
    Quote Originally Posted by dannno View Post
    That is some dedication, can you make anything else cool in there?

    I think I'd rather build a meat smoker, but pizza is pretty tasty..
    I already have a smoker. Fish fits in there too, not just meat...

    You can make pretty much anything in a wood fired oven that you can make in a regular oven. But it's specifically good for things that either have to go very long or very hot. Once you fired it and you place the door in there you can keep something hot for maybe even a few days if you wanted.

  26. #52
    I broke apart the form yesterday. A very smooth and rock-hard slab of concrete was greeting me. I'm really satisfied with this, it's not the first concrete I've ever mixed but it was A LOT more than I've mixed before.

    It's currently raining a bit, when it has stopped I'll go out to make some pics.

  27. #53
    A pic of the finished concrete foundation, sorry for the image quality, it was made with my phone.
    I'm quite pleased with the result. Overall there's only a little under 1/16th of an inch of an inch of difference from my plans, completely negligible.

  28. #54
    That is gonna be so cool!

  29. #55
    Quote Originally Posted by dannno View Post
    That is some dedication, can you make anything else cool in there?

    I think I'd rather build a meat smoker, but pizza is pretty tasty..
    Quote Originally Posted by Root View Post
    That is gonna be so cool!
    Hot is the right word !

  30. #56
    I'm ordering the bricks for the exterior masonry work today. As I haven't decided on the final shape of the chimney and front entrance. I'm having a little hard time calculating the amount of bricks I need.

    These bricks, although I'm not 100% sure they're exactly the same but very close.


    I have to cut bricks at all the 45 degree angled corners, there are a couple different ways I could do this and I haven't figured out which way I'm going to use.

    1. Overlap bricks as normal and cut off the excess when finished. I have already decided I'm not going to use this method as I find it a very ugly solution. The face of a brick (especially these) looks totally different. (in this case too perfect)

    2. Cutting all bricks at 22,5 degrees and using one long standing mortar joint, as this is non structural it wouldn't matter and each of the 8 sections of wall would be anchored to the main structure. This is probably my most likely option although the standing mortar joint is something I don't like, even if it isn't structural. It's not supposed to be there.

    3. Cutting bricks at the same 22,5 degree angle as above but epoxying them together to make a sort of squint brick. These could be longer/shorter on each end in order to complete the normal masonry work without long standing joints. I'll probably end up using this method as I like to make things complicated for myself.

    That's my small update for today.

    I'm just an amateur, so any tips or suggestions are welcome.
    Last edited by luctor-et-emergo; 06-30-2014 at 06:25 AM.



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  32. #57
    Pidgeon Hole:



    Squint:



    Many brickyards will sell you stock squints for 45 corners that match your brick if you choose a common brick style.


    another option is to overlap:





    you can also round your squints with a grinder... couldn't find a quick 45 pic but here's 90:







    If you're new to bricklaying... one quick tip that will help quite a bit... before you turn your trowel sideways while holding mortar, give it a quick "shake" this will suction the mortar to the trowel, keeping it from sliding off.



    Also... learn to talk to your brick




    It will increase creativity!




    For your "one time use purposes" check out a:



    You can get one of these and a "throw away" skill circular saw for under $100. Rig up a thin dishwasher supply line to wet the blade; spray your tool down w/ compressed air and then some PB Blaster or WD-40 between uses; cut slowly as to not burn up your saw.
    Last edited by presence; 06-30-2014 at 08:11 AM.

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  33. #58
    Quote Originally Posted by presence View Post
    Pidgeon Hole:



    Squint:



    Many brickyards will sell you stock squints for 45 corners that match your brick if you choose a common brick style.


    another option is to overlap:





    you can also round your squints with a grinder... couldn't find a quick 45 pic but here's 90:

    There are no squints available for the bricks I picked. It's not a common style but it's the same I used on my workshop. Which is right next to the oven.

    If you look at the bricks I posted, I hope you agree that grinding them down is not going to look really nice. As a personal taste, I don't like either the pigeon holes or the overlap joints. They would look good on a large building but there's only about 30 inches between each corner so it would look pretty busy either way. I'm making it difficult, I know.
    Last edited by luctor-et-emergo; 06-30-2014 at 07:55 AM.

  34. #59
    Quote Originally Posted by luctor-et-emergo View Post
    I'm making it difficult, I know.
    Don't get too lost in the details, even the hamton court brick chimneys are stacked on simple squinted corner bases.



    After you cut your squints you can ease the edges to make them look factory with a 4 1/2 grinder and a:




    I'd mass produce before I got started laying.

    Another helpful hint is to use some burlap or small piece of plush carpet to brush your bricks clean before the mortar cures.
    Last edited by presence; 06-30-2014 at 08:39 AM.

    'We endorse the idea of voluntarism; self-responsibility: Family, friends, and churches to solve problems, rather than saying that some monolithic government is going to make you take care of yourself and be a better person. It's a preposterous notion: It never worked, it never will. The government can't make you a better person; it can't make you follow good habits.' - Ron Paul 1988

    Awareness is the Root of Liberation Revolution is Action upon Revelation

    'Resistance and Disobedience in Economic Activity is the Most Moral Human Action Possible' - SEK3

    Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.

    ...the familiar ritual of institutional self-absolution...
    ...for protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment...


  35. #60
    Quote Originally Posted by presence View Post
    I'd mass produce before I got started laying.
    That's a good idea yeah. Cutting every time I meet a corner isn't going to make work progress any faster. It would also help with quality I think.

    Another helpful hint is to use some burlap or small piece of plush carpet to brush your bricks clean before the mortar cures.
    Before or after I scrape out the excess mortar for pointing ?

    btw, awesome brickwork in that pic.. I can't imagine making that, not enough function for me to put that much effort into it but I love seeing other people doing that.

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