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

[tom72]

This is just the completion of the clay dome (finally!)

If nothing else, at least I get to take a break for a while, which my back will greatly appreciate. Now all there is to do is wait...wait for it to dry, empty the sand, and fire it a little at a time to cure it. Then insulation and finishing plaster. Hopefully I'll have good news and more photos in a couple of weeks. Thanks for looking!

 

[63brew]

man i love it. been thinking about doing this too. i'm still a non searchable noob. I need to dig up some info. anyways it looks great, i can't wait to see some pics of pizza firing in there.

 

[caliking]

@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!

still lookin' good!

I think you should be okay. With my leaky non-mortared build, I can hit 900°+ with a few pieces of split wood. You may already know this from your research, but I think the clay needs to dry out slowly, so may need to be covered with wet burlap or newspaper as it dries, or even hosed down intermittently. I may not be 100% right, so you may want to check. would hate for you to find cracks as it dries.

 

[Carbon]

Nice build! Looks to be efficient with the ideal entry/dome ceiling ratio.

I did the same thing on my build, used an angle iron instead of an arch for the entry.