https://community.fornobravo.com/ Questions and comments on building the Pompeii Oven chamber and vent. en Sat, 25 Apr 2026 02:49:46 GMT vBulletin 60 images/misc/rss.png https://community.fornobravo.com/ https://community.fornobravo.com/forum/pizza-oven-design-and-installation/pompeii-oven-construction/470517-maximum-mortar-thickness-joint-width Fri, 17 Apr 2026 18:34:26 GMT Hi all, new ambitious oven owner here. I am going for a pretty standard hemisphere-on-a-row-of-soldiers design, but i have to admit I hit a bottleneck when it comes to brick sizing, in regards to the resulting joint gap. The overall goal is to avoid multiple and angled cuts on the bricks. So,...
I am going for a pretty standard hemisphere-on-a-row-of-soldiers design, but i have to admit I hit a bottleneck when it comes to brick sizing, in regards to the resulting joint gap.
The overall goal is to avoid multiple and angled cuts on the bricks. So, for the square-cornered bricks, on the interior of the dome i will just get them to touch at one corner and then the resulting joint gap won't be more than 3mm (1/8 in), that's the easy part.

But what grinds my gears is how big should I allow the joint gap to be on the exterior side, considering the overall joint bond strength and thermal-shift behaviour.

Naturally going upwards towards the top rings of the dome the width of the brick must shorten, as to reduce the joint gap (both on the inside and outside of the dome), but what is the absolute threshold I should aim for? Does a rule of thumb exist? I guess it is eventually mortar-brand dependant and on the very top rings beveled bricks are inevitable, but like i said the goal is to minimise brick cutting so to cut only when necessary, i.e. max joint gap reached.

Extending already on the matter, shortening the width of the brick also reduces the brick overlap - staggering margin. I know that the brick joint of the next row should ideally sit in the middle of the the brick in the row below, but we all know that this is impossible to maintain, hence the use of custom stagger-bricks here and there, but what is the minimum overlap of bricks from row to row we aim for? you get it, since making stagger-bricks means performing cuts.

I am surprised that a thread somewhere doesn't exist already, or if I didn't find it please refer me.

Thanks all.]]> Pompeii Oven Construction Al Neer https://community.fornobravo.com/forum/pizza-oven-design-and-installation/pompeii-oven-construction/470517-maximum-mortar-thickness-joint-width https://community.fornobravo.com/forum/pizza-oven-design-and-installation/pompeii-oven-construction/470192-virtual-tour-revisited Sun, 29 Mar 2026 13:07:00 GMT ​

Sixteen years ago, I posted a virtual tour of my oven just before its first burn. I recently tried to revisit that post to see how sixteen years of use had changed the interior, but since Adobe Flash was discontinued in December 2020 and to my neglect, the original link only returned errors.

To fix this, I am reposting the tour using a new link and Ruffle to restore the panoramas. I plan to follow this up with a "16 years later" tour sometime in April.

Jim

Instructions for the tour:

1. Click the link below.
2. When the player appears, click once on the black background outside of the player window.
3. Return to the player screen: click and drag the left mouse button to navigate, and click the arrows to change views.
4. Use the Ctrl key to zoom in and the Shift key to zoom out
   
   https://gleim.us/OCam/OvenCam.html

​​]]> Pompeii Oven Construction jcg31 https://community.fornobravo.com/forum/pizza-oven-design-and-installation/pompeii-oven-construction/470192-virtual-tour-revisited