MY 40inch CORNER BUILD

[david s]

Not totally sure about this, but from reading your thread it sounds like you have not cast or drilled any weep holes in your supporting slab. If not they can still be drilled up through the bottom, although you probably won’t know where the reo is, so drill small diameter pilot holes first.
This helps enormously to get the underfloor moisture out, both from building the insulating slab as well as moisture that can and will accumulate ther later. Not allowing sun and wind do much of the slabs drying and keeping it covered until laying the floor bricks over it, means there will be lots of free water left in the slab. Many builders report that it stakes months to push this water out by firing, which is indicated by the oven continuing to improve in performance for months.
Again I may have misread your posts, so ignore my advice if you are aware of this problem.

[Mr.Pizza3]

I’ll have to take some screenshots from the Timelapse video I have tomorrow to show more pictures of the first dome row etc but those were the final pictures from today I got the first row completed and about 60-70% of the second row competed until it was dark and dimmer was done .

continuing work tomorrow !!

[Mr.Pizza3]

Archway towers completed up to top brick which still needs to be cut on and angle for the archway to rest on

towel for presoaking the soldier row for stronger bond I had a flower watering bucket that I would reapply water with worked good

[Mr.Pizza3]

Additional photos of soldier row

[Mr.Pizza3]

Soldier course being mortared in!

[Mr.Pizza3]

This is how I got the shape and angle for my archway cuts once I got my soldier toe close enough during the dry fit I simply took a piece of paper and pushed it into the space and cut along the bottoms of the archway form and the adjacent soldier brick

super easy and worked out pretty good !

[Mr.Pizza3]

[Mr.Pizza3]

Archway cuts and form!

[Mr.Pizza3]

My IT tool and the soldier row being dry fit

[Mr.Pizza3]

My oven floor / base set

[Mr.Pizza3]

Making my herring bone pattern of course somone was mad I wasn’t paying attention to them

[Mr.Pizza3]

[Mr.Pizza3]

I cannot stress Facebook market place enough in any of my projects I do I always am scouting out marketplace

I don’t even like Facebook that much but marketplace is Craigslist on steroids and it always have brought me gems and some really solid finds

in this case I was able to land an MK Diamond 1070 10” tile with miter capabilities for only 150 dollars

I did go out and buy a 10” diamond blade for it meant to cut pavers for about 80$ but still a great purchase

seams to take around 25- 30 seconds to cut through the brick

not sure what kinds of cutting times you guys are getting with your saws

but I’m happy with it

i think down the road I may replace the motor bearing and brushed to quiet it down and give it more power see if it helps speed up the cutting time if I were to build more of these for other people but for this project it’s doing just fine

[Mr.Pizza3]

I’ll have to figure out how to add the photos I figured I could upload straight from my phone seems more difficult than that lol

[Mr.Pizza3]

Well it’s been a few days…

anyways I come bearing photos!

my V-Crete came out great I ended up going with an 8-1 / 9-1 ratio of vermiculite to Portland cement
i know some people have said it should be a drier mix but I think o was around 4-6 parts water it made a good consistency and I did give it a nice pat for compaction not too much but in the end it came out great

i Ended up leaving the forms on until I was ready to do the floor so it sat for a couple weeks in formed with poly pulled over it tightly and two layers of tarps to keep the sun off it … its been very hot here in WNY

—— I see after scrolling up I already spoke about the v-Crete and see that it’s actually been curing for almost a month!

I have about 3 other projects going on congruently two of which were time sensitive so this got put on hold and I was waiting on a bigger tiles saw

About two days ago I officially pulled the forms off and uncovered it and it’s looked amazing still perfectly level and no damage to side walls from the forms

I’ll post some pictures of the form I built but I rubbed it in vegetable oil and it did a great as a release agent

After the. I put a skim coat over the whole thing of a 1-1 mixture with fire clay and masons sand

I did a herring bone pattern for my floor and used the same mixture of 1-1 fire clay and sand to set and level my floor and best as you can we with these bricks and it worked out pretty good I slid a brick over it and never caught any edges so I think we are good I figure if anything I can always sand down edges if any issues arise in the future but I doubt that will be the case

following that I built the form for the inner arch this went pretty well I used some scrap 1/2 plywood and to make the arch I marked the center of the bottom of the form and marked the top of my arch in this case according to the charts should be about 13 7/8’s when I marked that I took some string and tied it around a marker and then placed the marker on the point and pulled the string tight to the bottom center point and held it with my thumb snd fr there moved the marker left and right and voilą we had an arch

I built my IT tool from 3/4 inch plywood I based it off of Artisan Made’s IT tool from YouTube as I am basically mimicking his build.

I did make a slight variation to the tool so it would sit lower to the oven floor. The rotating piece was built from the smallest castor I could find at Home Depot and I made my arm from 1x2 wood

I decided to put my Soldier on top of my floor and I mortard them down so I’d have a solid base when building my dome , I did not pre soak the bricks or wet the floor so that it would be a weak bond and crack loose of the floor were to move during heat cycles and not effect my dome

today I went ahead and got the first dome course in it went very smooth I did record it as a time lapse came out cool .
I started my second row I could not understand the chart on how to get the bevel angle for the bricks so I got it close enough where there’s no inverted V or at the very least it’s very subtle I got most of those in but dinner was ready and it was dark enough I decided I will continue the second row tomorrow and hopefully get the third row in and maybe start the archway

I do have the towers for the inner arch built and leveled still h e one more brick for each side but waiting till I do the arch to add them

anyway that’s where I am at for now

also I am using the Home Brew 3-1-1-1 it’s working out great

i got the fire clay of Zoro

the masons sand and Portland cement from Home Depot

and the masons like Type S from my construction supply house