36" in Seattle

[david s]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Try adding the ash to your compost.It is quite alkaline but that maybe an advantage particularly if your compost has a lot of leaves which tend to be acidic. I usually dump at least 1/2 the coals into a bucket of water, because my oven is small and I need the space. The coals are also excellent in the compost, great for holding water.

[tfasz]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Looking nice Keith - great progress over the past couple of months. Especially considering the Seattle weather we have been having. I'm keen to see your enclosure completed - I have contemplated a similar approach, but am still leaning towards an igloo.

Oven looks great - look forward to hearing some of your cooking stories.

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

I've only done a single curing fire, just a handful of balls of newspaper, so I really don't have a feel for what these ovens are like when they get fired up. Maybe ash won't be a problem. Thanks.

[vintagemx0]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Is your ash a super-fine white/gray dust, or does it contain a lot of black chunks. I ask because I have only had to clean out my oven once, (after several long firings for meals) and it was only a small dust pan full. If your stuff is mostly black, I would guess that you just haven't reached max temps yet. Just leave it in there because when it gets hot enough, it will burn to completion. (If it's black, it's carbon)

It does make sense to throw the ashes in the garden, or even fling them over your grass. It has minerals that certainly can't hurt anything.

Nice progress by the way. Your dome is very well built. Keep the updates coming!

The Morgans

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

My pizza peel adventure continues. The 12" rectangular isn't much different from earlier pics, except for the addition of two brass bolts to hold it firmly together. The six inch circular peel is done...to the extent that it won't turn out to be a failure. It might be too small (most people use eight inch circular peels I believe), and the forward nut on the underside, although filed down and tapered as best as I could, still might catch on the edges of the floor bricks, sooo, I'll see.

I strongly considered buying a rivet punch, but the bolts through the handle are way too long for that. Nevertheless, a rivet would be very helpful at the end of the circular peel, to minimize the profile and the risk of catching edges. Question to myself: should I buy an entire rivet punch and a box of rivets for literally one rivet? Sigh.

I put a very slight elbow on the circular peel such that when the peel is flat on the floor, the handle angles up very slightly. I'll see how that goes once I start cooking.

What I really need to make is a rake. The curing fires are going to quickly fill the oven up with ash.

BTW...what do people *do* with their ash? Where does it go? Do you just scatter it around the yard? Is it, perhaps, good for the plants? I can imagine it might be.

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Started constructing the hardibacker frame for the first vermicrete terrace. Also making steady progress on my totally ridiculous circular pizza peel.

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Well, I just couldn't let it go. I had to fill the holes in the dome-arch merges. This is maximum OCD. Oh well.

Sets my curing schedule back a few days too. Sigh.

[ThisOldGarageNJ]

Re: 36" in Seattle

congrats on your first fire.......

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Started making pizza peels. I already have a short and a long-handled wooden peel. I bought a rectangular aluminum 12" peel with a ridiculously short handle, removed the handle, and replaced it with a 48" dowel. I also bought some 6"x18" 16 gauge steel and started cutting out a small circular peel. I realize these peels are usually 8" but 6" was the size of the piece. If it is really problematic, I'll make or buy another one. The metal blade that came with the HF jigsaw (specifically labeled steel) ground all the teeth away long before I could finish so I switched to the angle grinder (which ate this steel for lunch, almost frightening), but which can't cut some of the necessary corners, so I'll have to get another jigsaw blade to finish it.

Cheers!

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

First curing fire today!

The brickwork started at about 50F. At full force the apex of the dome hit about 115F, basically perfect if I understand things correctly. I might take it slow and do a few of these wimpy paper and cardboard fires before pushing it. No rush seeing as I don't have the necessary tools to do much cooking anyway. I'm working on that (see next post).

[ThisOldGarageNJ]

Re: 36" in Seattle

hey keb,,,

nice job,, your almost threre....

cheers
mark

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Continuation of previous post.

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Removed the suspended awning in prep for placing the stovepipe (and to ease work installing the insulation).

Installed the InsWool HP Bulk today. Two 25 lb boxes. The sidewalls are three inches thick while the apex is closer to six inches thick. However, the sidewalls are packed considerably more densely, so the whole oven may actually be equally insulated (which wasn't my intention but despite my best efforts and precalculations I was coming up short toward the apex). In an effort to save a little of the InsWool for the apex I poured vermiculite into the bottom three inches. You can see it in some of the photos. This was very messy. The large granules are properly contained behind the screen, but there is a pile of gold dust spilling through the screen onto the hearth now. It won't matter in the end since the whole thing will be poured with vermicrete but it's messy in the meantime.

By far the most tedious aspect of this job was sewing the screen into a dome shape with wire. For this reason alone I highly suggest that no one ever replicate my design. Use the blankets that everyone else on FB uses. Sewing a screen dome was absolutely back-breaking, literally.

Needless to say, the vent will be insulated solely by vermicrete. I just couldn't figure out how to cage around it with screen.

Photos continued in next post.

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Keith, what do you mean by "bought some material for the enclosure"? I like the circus tent enclosure you have now. It's unique, colorful and keeps out the rain .

It precludes any notion of a chimney!

...which has suddenly become a problem for me in the following manner. I would like to stuff the InsWool behind the screen and start doing curing fires this weekend while I frame the external enclosure. Clearly, this will require fully uncovering the oven to insert the stove pipe in the shoe on top of the vent. From that point forward, I will only be able to wrap a tarp up over the oven and pull it around the front like a cape. Thus, the front will be fully exposed. The problem with this is that the three inches of insulation board are completely unprotected along the front edge. If you look in some of my photos, I have a board lying up against the front edge to protect the board from physical damage during construction. I'm worried that rain gathering on the hearth will steadily soak the insulation board. I realize InsBlock 19 can get a little wet from time to time, but I don't know if it's acceptable for it to be really soaked and potentially never dry out again.

In fact...on a longer term, I have the same question with regard to how I finish the hearth. My intention is to build the hearth up several inches of course. The top of the oven floor is 5.5" from the hearth. I would like the final working surface of the hearth to be between 4.5" and 5.5", either flush with, or perhaps a little below the floor (to encourage rain to flow out instead of in and to ease ash removal. However I do this (pour more concrete, just pile up bricks, some other surface, I dunno) I will still have the same problem, of rain running down the front crack along the opening straight into the insulation board.

How do people suggest dealing with this? I am considering mortaring a strip of hardibacker along the front of the InsBlock (the mortar would only be along the bottom edge against the hearth as a water barrier). I dunno.

[egalecki]

Re: 36" in Seattle

I've just checked out your pictures- I think your oven looks great and any imperfections will not matter in the long run. Honestly, when you have a roaring fire going, so hot you don't even have smoke, just shimmering hot, any little nooks or crannies causing turbulence just won't matter. To cook pizza, what really matters is getting the fire pushed to one side and keeping a flame licking the roof, to recharge the floor. For cooking anything else, I have not found any of the oddball surfaces in my oven (and there are plenty) causing food to cook unevenly. As you cook in it, you'll figure out what works for YOUR oven and do that.

Get that baby closed up and cure it!

wishing we weren't smack in the middle of snowpocalypse 3.....I can't even GET to my oven, much less cook in it...