36" in Seattle

[berryst]

Re: 36" in Seattle

I buried the whole works underground. Now the whole thing is buried in vegetation
...except the front.
Made 20 pizza last night ...party!

berryst

[mklingles]

Re: 36" in Seattle

That's really cool! My original plan was to build a roof structure over the oven location and have grass grow on top of the roof, but the location we settled on just didn't get enough sun.

[charliefarley]

Re: 36" in Seattle

What a beautiful build! Very nice work.
I'm impressed with your brickwork and love the planters on top.

I was wondering about your brick placement tool. I decided to make my dome height slightly lower that the radius as well and came up with a tool that gives me an elliptical curve but there are a lot of drawbacks with mine in that it does actually give you the angle of the brick only the distance.

How did you make the measurements that set the tool up for each course?

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

What a beautiful build! Very nice work.
I'm impressed with your brickwork and love the planters on top.

I was wondering about your brick placement tool. I decided to make my dome height slightly lower that the radius as well and came up with a tool that gives me an elliptical curve but there are a lot of drawbacks with mine in that it does actually give you the angle of the brick only the distance.

How did you make the measurements that set the tool up for each course?

Very carefully. Here's my process, follow the diagram included in this post as I go:

1. Draw the true curve that defines the dome profile: floor radius longer than dome height.
2. Adjust this curve to account for the vertical sidewall (what is sometimes built with a soldier course, although I just laid bricks flat in two layers). This adjustment consists of raising the previous curve straight up off the floor so it still curves up to the apex from the top of the sidewall but at the sidewall it is a sheer vertical drop to the floor.
3. Place bricks along the curve (rectangles). Start from the floor and make the side walls. Then follow the curve on up. Each brick should satisfy two placement constraints: tangent to the curve, i.e., the inner face is orthogonal to the derivative of the curve and perfectly abuts the curve, and meets the brick below it edge to edge (corner to corner in a 2D diagram). Note, I did this "by eye". Anyone who actually calculates this stuff is insane!
4. Quit this process when there isn't enough room at the top to place more bricks (see my diagram, I just quit near the top leaving a gap in my design).
5. Project each brick's radial axis to the floor of the oven (the radial "rays" in my diagram).
6. Those rays define the point on the oven floor (a concentric circle around the center of the floor) where the brick placement tool must reach up from in order to properly place the brick with no upward or downward tilting.
7. Calculate the various arm lengths. There are two arms (floor and support) attached by a hinge and there are two such arm lengths unique to every single brick level in the diagram. The floor arm gets shorter as you go up the oven and the support arm gets longer. That's just my oven though (well any ellipse I suppose).
8. Now find some way of constructing a tool that can be adjusted to every required arm length on both arms for each level. My design is shown in the second photo of this post, but there are numerous ways this could be done.

Cheers!

[charliefarley]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Brilliant, thanks.

I've mocked up a photoshop file as per yours (42" diameter - 18" high dome), I'll give this a go tomorrow.

So you took your measurements with a mock up arc in real size rather than in the software? The diagram was just for you to visualize this? It's certainly helped me understand how this can be accomplished.

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

So you took your measurements with a mock up arc in real size rather than in the software? The diagram was just for you to visualize this? It's certainly helped me understand how this can be accomplished.

I'm not sure I understand. The design was done in software. Once I had the diagram shown above, I measured the relevant lengths on the diagram (two arm lengths per brick level) and used those lengths to govern the construction of the physical brick placement tool and its adjustment from one level to the next.

[david s]

Re: 36" in Seattle

If you attached a turnbuckle to the arm a few turns each time you go up a course would be a neat solution.

[mklingles]

Re: 36" in Seattle

I qualify as insane! I'm trying to do the calculations for my dome. Hopefully next week I'll start a thread with my spreadsheet posted. A thread for mathematically insane oven builders. (insert maniacal laugh track...).

I attached a turnbuckle. It's working well. Be warned you need left handed nuts and threaded rod to go with the turnbuckle.

[charliefarley]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Thank you Kebwi for this tool, it is working out well for me.

Attaching a turnbuckle to this tool allowed me to work out my inner arch cuts.

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Oh man, that's awesome, I can't believe someone replicated my design.

Cheers!

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Thanksgiving is set for my house, so I need to learn how to cook a bird in my oven. Tonight was my first attempt. In the end everything went fine, but I was losing heat so it took much longer to cook than expected (about 425 in, 350 out). I meant to start hotter but after firing for a while, then cleaning out the coals, that's where it was, mid 400s. I wasn't going to pizza temps and didn't quite hit my target (mid 500s). Also, we kept opening the oven to deal with other things (potatoes, corn, & bread). It would have retained a lot more heat if I had just left the door in place.

We brined it for a little less than an hour a pound (four hours for a five and a half pound chicken). The brine solution was one gallon water, one cup salt, half cup brown sugar, and an unmeasured amount of ground multicolor pepper and rosemary. We stuffed the chicken with onions, garlic and rosemary (the last two from our garden), coated it with olive oil and poured white wine in the bottom of the pan. Cooked with the lid on for a while, then finished it up with the lid off (then put the lid back on to desperately try to finish it at the low temps.). It was the moistest most succulent chicken I've ever eaten in my life. It practically disintegrated off the bone as I was carving it. It wouldn't even stay together for me to carve properly. Awesome.

The bread was a no-knead recipe from our neighbor which specifically called for a dutch oven. Go figure. Turned out pretty good actually despite not being the highlight of the evening. Wish I'd taken more pictures of it.

Cheers!

[splatgirl]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Whoo, success! That all looks great!
I strongly recommend heating your oven as you would for pizza, meaning get it really hot and then let it cool back down. Because you've then really soaked the bricks, you'll find that it loses heat much more slowly than if you only heat to close to the temp you are looking for. More stable temps and more forgiving of screwing around. This will be even more important the more stuff you put in.
I also suggest putting your next practice (or your final) on a pan with low sides like a sheet tray. You're losing out on a lot of delicious brown and crisp by having a deep pan around the bird. I just got a couple of those stand-up roaster racks for chickens that I am going to try next time, but I usually use a rack ON a sheet pan so that as much of the bird as possible has a clear view of brick.
The original no-knead bread recipe calls for baking in a dutch oven...works great huh?
Although in a WFO, its unnecessary because that already is your dutch oven!

congrats! The easiest and best chicken you've ever cooked, right?

[fxpose]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Very nice!! I need to practice with a couple of birds before T-giving as well. This will be my first turkey ever.

[kebwi]

Re: 36" in Seattle

Thanksgiving 2010.

I did two small turkeys instead of one big one. There was concern that my @*#(*@! neighbor might call the fire department and have me shut down so I wanted a second turkey in the kitchen. However, she didn't call them which meant that by the time the oven was fully fired and ready, I decided to just do them both in the brick oven anyway.

...but, I didn't fire it solidly enough, didn't really give it a good long heat soak, so I lost heat really fast. After waiting a while, my wife and I "chickened" out and brought one turkey into the house to finish in the kitchen oven. At the same time I actually relit two small fires on opposites sides of the brick oven (around a foil-covered turkey) to get some heat back in. You can see in the photos how I was trying to prevent heat loss while refiring the oven the second time while still letting the fire breath by covering the external opening with the door but lifted slightly on two bricks.

The searing you see is obviously from the secondary fire which was more aggressive than I anticipated. The other turkey (which doesn't count in my book since it spent its second half in the kitchen oven) looks much more consistent.

Anyway, they were both a huge hit. I brined for about half a day and they literally disintegrated on the cutting board. The whole event was quite a success -- twelve (and a two-year-old) extremely full diners in attendance.

Cheers!

[jerrycook]

Re: 36" in Seattle

What's with the neighbor? Before I built my oven, I went to the fire chief and all he was concerned about was how close to other structures it would be and was I going to burn garbage in it. Turns out a little turned into garbage when it came out, but not very much, all things considered.

Looks really good I've done chickens on stands and was quite happy with them. Speaking of chicken, I was too chicken to put my $50 turkey in the oven.