Pizza Oven....YEAH BABY! (Part 2)

For those of you that were following my original thread, I apologize for the lack of updates. Life has a way of getting in the way...

Anyhow, since my last post is so old I can't post to it anymore, so here is my original post followed by my new progress photos:


Okay, it's not done yet, but I'm really excited that I got off my butt and got the ball rolling on this. I have been obsessed with pizza for years and I've been making my own for as long as I can remember, but I really hate making it in the oven. It still comes out really good, but it's lacking something.

I've played around with a lot of different ideas to modify a grill, as I'm really not a fan of how pizza comes out making it on the grill...I had been thinking of a FrankenWeber type mod.

Anyway, I decided to go a different route completely, so this is what hopefully is the start of something good:

Dug out a hole a little over a foot deep (didn't take pictures of just the hole...filled it with about 5 inches of gravel:




I topped that off with about 5 inches of concrete. I didn't get a picture of just the slab (not real attractive anyway, but this is just laying the bricks out to make sure I made the foundation big enough:




Here's as far as I got today:






Not too bad for a start...next weekend I should get a lot further on it. I'll keep adding pictures as I go. Wish me luck (because I seem to be severely lacking in the skill department!).



Okay, here's the new stuff:































Well, I'm getting pretty close now. The base is complete, along with the insulation layer. The firebrick floor is set in a slab of 1 part fire clay to 3 parts sand and is currently drying. Next up is to make the arch for the entry and then make the dome. I can almost tase those pizzas already! Thanks for looking!

Update 12.12.12

Well, I was going to go with a nice round brick arch, but discovered quickly that with my lack of knowledge and any real skill, I was going to have a problem getting it done....and I was worried about it holding up over time. Instead I went with this...stacked brick on either side, with steel bars running across the top with bricks set on top of those:

Beginning of sand form:

Sand form done....this took a LOT longer than I expected. Almost everything so far has!

Covering with wet newspaper:

Building the clay dome:

Well, I got the dome built a little over halfway before I ran out of clay and daylight, so I have picked up more supplies and will hopefully finish building the dome tomorrow. Then it's a matter of getting it dried out without any major cracks and digging the clay out. I'm starting to get excited about this now!

@Guamaque - Thanks! That's actually what I have surrounding the bottles in the insulation layer. It's a mix of perlite with clay slip. Initially I was using sawdust with clay slip, but I found the perlite/clay mixture MUCH easier to work with. After the dome dries out and I cure it, I'm planning on going over the clay dome with the perlite/clay mixture out to the edges of the bricks. That should give me 4-5 inches of insulation around the outside of the dome...hopefully that'll be enough. I'd like to use this for baking/roasting too.

@caliking - The entry/arch is 10.5 inches tall, and the top of the inside of the dome is right at 16 inches. I've read everywhere from 63% - 67% entry to dome height, so I'm roughly 65%...hopefully that will work. If need be, I can close it off by building up clay inside the edges of the entry. Hopefully I don't need to open it up more!