MY 40inch CORNER BUILD

[MarkJerling]

i noticed when pulling the pizzas or spinning them it was trickier due to not trying to push it into the rear fire

to be honest since it was a curing fire I didn’t wanna do anything too X-crazy with placement I chose to push it almost all the way to the back so I could spread it more and allow the dome to be more evenly heated as much as I wanted to cook pizza I had to keep reminding myself what we were actually doing with the fires

next week when she’s fired back up I will be starting with a side fire and experimenting!

isn’t that the best part? Learning the characteristics of your oven?

also my fuel source is mainly aged ash not sure if it’s considered a hard wood but I have virtually an unlimited supply of it and it burns very very hot

also have a few people willing to give me some hickory, maple, and some oak which I will use for roasts etc adding in some nice flavor!

Sounds great! I burn a variety of fruit woods with olive being the hardest and hottest burning.

[Mr.Pizza3]

Here are some photos of the vent again Napa for around 10-15 bucks?

1/2 inch NPT thread I got a female pvc coupler and a 1/2 pvc to 1/2 male npt thread bottom piece to Sit on the insulation and then I’ll Teflon tape of silicone seal the vent once it’s ready for final install after tile! For now I’ll just thread it on

[Mr.Pizza3]

More photos of the render

[Mr.Pizza3]

Some photos of the final render!


Idk if you’ll see the small white lbs at the top but I do have a vent when I go to do the tile I will cut it down to size

for the Vent itself I went through NAPA they have multiple breather vents ranging from 1/4 thread up to 1” I opted for their half inch threaded on the vent itself it’s about 1 inch think and 2 inch diameter stainless steel finish

so I’m happy with that should work great!

[Mr.Pizza3]

Photos of the insulation

[Mr.Pizza3]

Now back to finishing off the base of the oven and getting it prepped for a stone veneer and a cool concrete pour project coming up for the front! Hopefully I’ll get it in this week we will see !

[Mr.Pizza3]

Is 7 days enough after just a mortar render for drying out?

I’ve seen some people say as little as 2 days after the mortar render you can fire it up again but I have no issue giving it a few more days then that to really get a strong cure in and dry out as much as it can

[Mr.Pizza3]

Well ,

id say the pizza oven is done all that remains now is my final tile finish on the dome , and base and building my brick surround for the chimney

the insulation went well I did 3 alternating layers of the 8lb CF blanket

(I got this on Amazon for 90 a roll)

the top of the dome has an additional layer of blanket as I had left over so the sides sit around 3 inches and the top half has 4

that part was easy

the damned chicken wire and getting the Type S mortar to bond was a bit messey and also made my dome look like a giant blob

dud to timing (it was 10pm and dark by last coat ) and the fact it was going to rain the entire next day I figured I’d cover it with poly to slow the cure and tarp it and on Sunday (day 1/2 later I’d do a second and final render cost where I could shape and clean up the unsightly mess of the first coat


well that went very very well! The dome is massive! Is crazy to see how large it really ends up being and I still have another 1/2 of thickness to add between tile and thinset in the future

due to the extra layers of insulation overlapping towards the top the dome took on a different shape then a traditional igloo but I think it looks reallly cool! There are a few areas where it has some small lumps but nothing the tile won’t be able to hide once it’s on there and it gives it a nice “hand-made” natural look so im not bothered by it

the chimney sits into the render really nicely and I made sure to give my self a solid base for the future chimney surround to sit on

more pictures of that to come!


no we r back to waiting it’ll sit in the shade for the remainder of today and then next two days it’ll be in the sun drying out

my plan is Friday to light up a small fire and slowly bring it up throughout the night to around 300 - 400 degrees and the Saturday bring it up a bit higher and Sunday go for full heat again that evening

[Mr.Pizza3]

Looking good. If I may make one recommendation, it would be to move your fire to the left side or right side, not the rear. That makes it easier to work with your pizza, and, as your floor cools, you can, occasionally, respread coals and move the fire to the other side. By not having the fire in the rear, it's much easier to not push your pizza into the coals and also much easier to control browning of the pizza sides.

i noticed when pulling the pizzas or spinning them it was trickier due to not trying to push it into the rear fire

to be honest since it was a curing fire I didn’t wanna do anything too X-crazy with placement I chose to push it almost all the way to the back so I could spread it more and allow the dome to be more evenly heated as much as I wanted to cook pizza I had to keep reminding myself what we were actually doing with the fires

next week when she’s fired back up I will be starting with a side fire and experimenting!

isn’t that the best part? Learning the characteristics of your oven?

also my fuel source is mainly aged ash not sure if it’s considered a hard wood but I have virtually an unlimited supply of it and it burns very very hot

also have a few people willing to give me some hickory, maple, and some oak which I will use for roasts etc adding in some nice flavor!

[MarkJerling]

And so that brings us up to last night which was Day 5 and our final during fire which would bring us up to pizza cooking temperatures

i knew I had to let the dome clear to know I hit temps that seems to be the consensus form reading through other forums that you reached a full cure if and when it clears

and we’ll into an hour of letting a fire build we began to see the roof of the dome clear the fire was burning hott

we were seeing mid 5s at the very bottom to around 800 + at the very top


and well it finally happened …….





WE MADE PIZZA!!!!


I cooked up some amazing garlic marinara sauce whipped up a couple batches of dough and we made our very first pizzas and boy did they cook quick !

the oven worked tremendously and more on the smokeless aspect the oven was performing so well all you saw coming from the chimney was the heat waves this oven was on top of its game!

We made two margharitas pies and one traditional plain

just had some left overs writing this and I’m sad I cannot make more pizza tonight since I will be doing the shell this afternoon and letting it sit for another week before firing again

idk if you will see in any of the photos but I wrapped my chimney in the towel I used as a pad for the tarp over it

it worked well for a temporary “insulation”

until I build the really chimney surround I am going to temporarily build a box to go around the chimeney and either use left over blanket insulation or fill with left over vermiculite until the new chimney surround is built prolly in a month or so

Looking good. If I may make one recommendation, it would be to move your fire to the left side or right side, not the rear. That makes it easier to work with your pizza, and, as your floor cools, you can, occasionally, respread coals and move the fire to the other side. By not having the fire in the rear, it's much easier to not push your pizza into the coals and also much easier to control browning of the pizza sides.

[Mr.Pizza3]

And so that brings us to today where I will be finishing out the final layers of insulation and coating the outside with type S mortar I was originally thinking about adding additional V-Crete to it but due to space requirements it won’t work so I’m not gonna worry about it I’ve seen plenty of builds without it , I may add some to the future base of the chimney that’s going to be built but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it

for no time to don the long sleeves Jeans gloves and mask and step out of the A/C into the 90 degree weather and get this bad boy covered and prepped for it’s outer shell!

[Mr.Pizza3]

I will repeat this post at the end for future readers who may not see it but if you have a restaurant depot in your area and know somone with an account there they sell a ton of pizza supply’s from the brush/ scraper tool to multiple sizes peels and smaller “oar” shaped peels for rotating your pizzas while cooking

they also have the metal trays you see my pizzas on for only 3$ a piece those are 14” trays they work great for prepping the pizza and cutting it up once out of the oven

tons of different accessories to look through as well

[Mr.Pizza3]

So just wanted to go over what I used for my control joint

since there wasn’t any caulk I was comfortable using that could withstand the temps my chimney may experience I opted to go with the rutland mortar although it hardens since I was doing such a thinn film of it mainly to encapsulate the rope gasket I assumed it would effect the thermal performance really

looking back I probably could have went with rutlands 800degree silicone but didn’t want to take the chance of it failing and going onto my foot

I used 3/4 gasket rope and stuffed it in and doubled it up where needed and laid it across the top to bridge to final gap between the clay flue and the mini wall I built off the dome

I used the same mortar to secure the chimney flue onto the base worked great


last night I took readings from either side of the control join and was getting temperature differences over 100 degrees so I will say the hardening caulk is doing good as far and insulating the two bricks


and Again the chimney is performing amazing ! And no leaks I could find

[Mr.Pizza3]

Last photos of pizza

[Mr.Pizza3]

More pizza photos