Newbie measuring help / questions

[snipe97]

Hello all, first and foremost thanks for all of those who have posted, helped and shared tremendous wisdom on this site. Unbelievable.

I am starting the oven portion of my build, and have found a way to massively confuse my desk-jockey self on the build. Apologies if these are super basic.

Right now, I am planning a 43.5" diameter oven and am following the FB corner install plan.

1. How do I determine what brick angle (shim) to use as I build the oven? First course I am planning is half soldier but then wondering how I set the angles for course 2, 3, etc.
2. My guess is answer 1 might have something to do with the IT If so, am I right in assuming the IT length should be the net radius of the oven? In this case would be 43.5"- 9" = 34.5" / 2 = 17.25"? (9" subtracted for the brick at 4.5" x 2). There's a great spreadsheet on the forums that produces a brick count and using that spreadsheet, length of the IT should be 19.9.

thanks to any and all for reading / help!

[JRPizza]

Lots of good posts on build and use of IT so you might want to do some searching. The length of the IT should be the radius of your oven ID, which is what most people reference when they say how large their oven is. You say you are planning a 43.5" oven and it looks like you are referring to oven brick shell OD? Probably best to start thinking in terms of ID. OD helps when figuring out how big of a hearth you need, but then you have to consider how much insulation, render etc you are going to apply to figure what the overall footprint of the build is going to be. Also, the FB corner plans are not correct which I quickly figured out when I did my corner build and things didn't make sense. If you take a look at my build thread it might help you a little, and there are quite a few other corners that are well documented.
Just curious, how did you come up with your oven size? Most builds seem to follow the FB plans of 36, 42, or build a "tweener" at 39" like I did. Most of the ovens smaller than 36 are built that way due to size constraints or just the desire to have a small oven. 42" might be too large for some, but I have never wished my 39" had been built smaller, as I can easily get two large baking pans in side by side.