Advice on Installing Door

[Leao]

Hi,

I'm looking for some tutorials on installing doors in wood fire ovens. Can't seem to find any on this site or via Google.

Are doors in wood fire ovens usually without hinges?

If I have a door with hinges, would I put the hinges in the refractory cement in between refractory bricks?

Many, many thanks for your time!

Leao

[dmun]

Re: Advice on Installing Door

Are doors in wood fire ovens usually without hinges?

Yes. You might want two or three different kinds of doors for your oven. You might want a plain metal lightweight door for ease of use, and an insulated door for retained heat baking. You might also want a "draft door" which goes outside the vent with a air inlet at the bottom for increasing the draft when starting your fire.

If I have a door with hinges, would I put the hinges in the refractory cement in between refractory bricks?

The door mostly goes on the inside of your entry, past the flue, and any hinged door, unless you built a recess for it to go into on the side of the entry, would get in the way of your fire tending and cooking.

Now I could see a decorative cast iron door with decorative hinges on the outside of your enclosure. That might look cool, but it wouldn't have much use other than keeping critters out of your oven if it's outside (or keeping heat in the inside of the house, if it's an indoor oven).

In any event, I wouldn't plan on drilling between your firebricks and putting screw anchors there. We have enough problems with cracking mortar as it is.

[david s]

Re: Advice on Installing Door

Because of the significant expansion and contraction of the oven, a door with hinges becomes problematic. A local wood fired oven restaurant here has an oven with a large steel door frame which expands first, before the outer shell has time to catch up to it and consequently has a huge crack right through the middle at the top. Not that it really matters, because his oven is indoors, he's just left it as he says "most ovens have cracks"
The common failure of most potters kilns is the doors. Hinges rust, doors drop, don't seal etc. This is caused by the expansion and the accelerated corrosion of metal parts because of the heat.
I think the best doors are ones that fit against the front of the entry and are a loose fit at the sides.

[nissanneill]

Re: Advice on Installing Door

Hi Leao,
I made a cast aluminium set of doors and hinged them with adjustable brass bushes to allow a close contact with a carbon fibre heat seal and have had no problems. As Dmun says, I use it to keep the oven closed but they are not insulated and I only use them to close the oven. See

http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/21/n...-a-2119-2.html

permalink #17

I very carefully set the steel frame into a slot cut into the firebricks so that the thermal coefficient difference does not cause any problems.

I also made up an insulated door that is held in place with a couple of bricks and holds the heat in the oven well. See

http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/f28/...door-5719.html


Neill

[fxpose]

Re: Advice on Installing Door

As dmun noted you can have different kinds of doors for their intended purposes.
I like to use my wfo as a smoker (using charcoal briquettes as heat source and wood chunks for smoke) so I also have a simple non-insulated door made entirely of a piece of plywood with vent openings at the top for exhaust and also at the bottom for fresh air intake.

[Leao]

Re: Advice on Installing Door

There are four traditional ways for framing your door opening, though we recommend the first, and easiest method. The easiest, fastest and least costly way of framing the oven opening is to use standard size bricks to frame the side of the opening, and a length of 2"x 2" x 3/16" angle iron to support the top of the opening.

From Formo Bravo's Starting the Oven Dome

Could someone explain how the angle iron is supposed to rest at the top of the opening to my dome?

Angle iron, like the image below, is not just a flat piece of metal but rather 2 flat pieces of metal joined together at a right angle. How can my bricks rest easily on it? Would I need to fill in the dip with refractory (v. expensive) cement?



Thanks for your time!

[Leao]

Re: Advice on Installing Door

Hi, I am going to get a simple iron door made. It is effectively a rectangular metal box. I have some Rockwool left over (good stuff - it goes up to 700C). Would it be a wise move to fill the metal box with this in the same way one would use fire board for insulation?

LEAO

[SableSprings]

In posts #10 and 11 of my Dragonfly Den thread (link on signature line), I have a few pics of how we did the opening header. The angle iron just laid across the two "reveal bricks". That presented a flat side to the front and provided the top seal for the future door. We took pains to make sure the edges of the reveal side bricks were on the same plane as the angle iron. Bricks were laid across the top of the angle iron, resting on the nice ledge provided by the metal piece. They were set in place at a slight angle so when the metal expanded, the bricks would have less friction by contact to the metal. We provided a little extra width support underneath to accommodate the slight angle while the mortar between bricks set. The angle iron, mortar, and extra support held the bricks nicely in place until the next chain from the dome extension put them in solidly in place (with a little extra mortar up front ).

I've attached an enlargement of the side view for the angle iron/brick. You can see the cross section of the angle iron under the front edge of the slightly angled brick. Definitely a situation where "mortar is your friend" and "I'm going to be covering it anyway" .

Hope that helps a little...it was really pretty simple to do.

P.S. I also used a piece of angle iron at the base of the chimney setup and interface with the dome. By using the angle iron there, I was able to use the gaps to provide moisture venting from the top insulation into the double chimney flue.

[JRPizza]

Have you started your oven yet? If yes can you post a picture of your opening? My dome has a hemispherical opening and does not use any metal in the inner arch, so if you have not started building and want to go with a round opening you don't need to worry about angle iron. I see where the instructions say a rectangular opening is the easiest, but I think if you review many builds on the site, especially newer ones, you won't see it too often.

[SableSprings]

If you look closely at the picture in post #9, you'll see that there is another brick laying on top of the standing side brick. That's what the angle iron is resting on and the front edge of the angle iron is effectively the reveal (door seal) top. The bricks in the very front are just the beginning of the smoke chamber/chimney base. My ratio for the opening and interior height is slightly below the golden 63% but still draws and functions well...just something for you to keep in mind when planning/building the dome.