Show us your Door Thread

[plastered]

My sloppy non-weld door based on Greenmans build -- The only thing I'm worried about is the ceramic fiber blanket pokes out a little bit in the corners, since my cuts and bends were poor. Cost me about 80 dollars for the aluminum sheets, sheet metal screws, and angle. Weights about 10 lbs. Took me a full afternoon to build. I wanted wooden handles but the Lowes I went to didn't have any, and I was impatient.

[Roger705]

2in thick with the same insulting board my oven floor is on.

[stovallsh]

I live in Ecuador and this was my first oven build. The oven is made from mud bricks, mud mortar and mud/straw layer on top. All of this is covered with chicken wire, fiber mat and then cement. The oven works very well. We made the door in 3 layers: metal on the inside, fiber mat, then wood on the outside. We made the oven using Forno Bravo's design. As such, the door is just inside the chimney. I've never understood why, exactly. When I close the door, the fire is snuffed out, so I always need to leave the door open a bit. Can someone help make this more clear to me? Is the door not meant to ever be closed when there is an actual fire going?

[SableSprings]

You are correct, the door will snuff out the fire and it is not intended that you have an active fire while using the door. The door is used during baking with retained heat and to keep the oven chamber relatively clean & dry when not in use (and it looks better as well...nobody likes looking at a bunch of ashes and charcoal pieces).

There are basically two ways you can use the oven: 1) Hot with active fire--pizza or 2) lower temperature, no fire/coals, for roasting and baking. My personal opinion is when you are starting fires in the oven, I like to heat the oven "gently" at first and then increase the burn rate for both uses. You can heat your oven one of three ways: 1) build a small fire and gradually add more wood to increase the oven temp to pizza target levels; or 2) use the door as a damper to keep the fire from growing too fast, opening the door more and more and gradually removing it as the fire grows and the oven heats up; or 3) just load up the oven with wood and light it off without the door in place . Lots of folks just build a medium fire right away and then add wood as the fire gets going well...I'm just more in favor of the gentle start approach for my oven and I'm mainly looking at baking bread the next day after firing. In general, I don't think many people use the door when firing up for pizza or during the pizza cooking. After the pizzas are cooked and the fire has burned down to coals, closing the door does starve the fire and basically puts it out (depending on how airtight your door is). I believe Gulf does this and then uses the resulting charcoal in his next firing.

For the lower temp, baking option--for instance baking bread or roasting meats, you want to heat the oven and then remove the fire/coals. When the coals have been removed and the oven temperature has cooled down slightly over your target temperature, putting the door on tightly for half and hour, allows the oven to equalize all your baking mass to the same temperature. I start fires for my bread bakes the night before and once the fire is going, I put the door on so there is an inch or two open on the top & sides--dampening position. This slows down the fire rate because of the reduced available air and as a result it burns more slowly and heats the oven up more gradually through the night. Usually in the morning my oven is well saturated with heat and the fire has been reduced to coals. I clear out the remaining coals, blow the ashes off the cooking floor, and put the door on tightly. After a half and hour, I open the equalized oven and check the temperature. I've done this often enough that I'm generally within 25°F of my target baking temp. I load my bread loaves in the oven, mist the oven chamber, and then close the door to keep in the moisture and maintain temperature. Roasting meats and other things works pretty much the same way...oven is heated, cleaned, equalized, and then the door is used to maintain the target temp while baking whatever is on the menu.

That's why the door is just inside the landing and against the oven opening, when you close it--the oven's heat does not escape out the chimney and allows you to do retained heat cooking. Sorry to be so long winded and I hope this answers your question. By the way, your oven is beautiful and the door is awesome.

I enjoyed Quito and El Monte very much when I visited there in 2012...beautiful parks and the TelefériQo was really a great experience.

[Pete C]

Hi folks

I am going to try and build door out of two 1" pieces of CaSi board wrapped in .002" 304 stainless steel foil. I will cover all exposed edges of the CaSi board with the foil and glue it on with Rutland metal-to-masonry furnace cement. I plan to add an oak or walnut backing to the entire assembly. I may also add a thicker plate of stainless for the bottom portion of the door which contacts the brick floor. Here is a pic of the foil and both CaSi pieces. What do you guys think? Is there another adhesive that you would recommend for attaching stainless to CaSi and CaSi to wood? I will post again once I start putting it together.

[MarkJerling]

Here's mine, before I fitted handles. 32mm stained ply on the outside, with a stainless steel "box" on the inside with furnace fireproofing bricks and blanket inside the (50mm thick) box. This is working very well with the outside of the door remaining at 45degC or lower, while the inside gets to whatever the temperature of the oven is.

Process: Templated door from arch. Door fits flush against inner arch. I saw no need to make a "stepped" door edge to have the door protrude into the smaller inner arch. I made the steel box first out of 1mm thick stainless steel sheet (for the faces that are seen) and galvanized sheet that I happened to have lying about for the face which is screwed to the back of the timber door. I made the steel door "box" first and test fitted that before filling the "box" with the insulation. Next, I made the timber door and test fitted that too. After that, I screwed the box outside face and sides to the timber door face and after that I filled the box with the insulation materials, namely the furnace insulating brick and furnace blanket. The last step was to pop rivet on the inside stainless steel door face.

I have now fitted handles to the outside, so I need to take some photos of that and add. I still would like to drill a small hole through the whole thing for a door mounted thermometer. All up, my cost was $20 for the stainless steel and rivets as all the rest was scrap materials, even the handles are left-over door handles from another project.

[NCMan]

[MarkJerling]

We made pizzas two evenings in a row. On Saturday night, after we finished cooking pizzas, I fitted the door. On Sunday, late afternoon I made fire again. The door helped to retain so much heat that I only needed to make fire for about one and a half hours and the oven was back to 600degC+ and held the heat much better too. I suspect that the bricks are well saturated now.

[BenKeith]

I kept mine fairly simple. 1/4" aluminum outer shell, 16ga SS inner shell with 8# fiber mat between them and oven door seal around the edge for nice tight fit .
The outer door is used for initial firing to keep smoke from coming out the front. It actually works better than planned because the air coming through the opening in the bottom is like forced air at the base of the flame and heats up hotter and faster than without it.
I guess you have to click on the photos to see all four

[Disco Stu]

[Disco Stu]

0.7mm staino inner, the top section was curved in the sheetmetal shrinker, two layers of 25mm superwool insulation, 3mm steel plate face, 10mm staino handles, staino pop rivets.

[MarkJerling]

Very nicely done Disco Stu. Your method is similar to mine, but I'd say mine is a lot rougher!

[JimShortz]

Door for overnight insulation...
I made this baby today, oven heating as I type! :-)
It's made from 2mm steel and a pair of 7.5cm thick AAC blocks sandwiched between the steel faces and carved to fit the shape. First use later today - I will report back on success, or otherwise...
I have attempted to limit connections between front and rear face, but the 6 bolts are unavaoidable (unless anyone has a better idea!), and along the bottom I made the steel panels only connect along about 30% of the edge (see photos).
Yes, I know I am not a professional welder. I only have an old stick welder, and although not beautiful, it is strong.
We shall see how it works... :-)Door for overnight insulation...
I made this baby today, oven heating as I type! :-)
It's made from 2mm steel and a pair of 7.5cm thick AAC blocks sandwiched between the steel faces and carved to fit the shape. First use later today - I will report back on success, or otherwise...
I have attempted to limit connections between front and rear face, but the 6 bolts are unavaoidable (unless anyone has a better idea!), and along the bottom I made the steel panels only connect along about 30% of the edge (see photos).
Yes, I know I am not a professional welder. I only have an old stick welder, and although not beautiful, it is strong.
We shall see how it works... :-)

[JimShortz]

I also have this single skin steel door that fis on the outside for use when heating up, or for a short term closure. The bar across the bottom pulls out to allow for a strong draw when doing the initial burn.

[JimShortz]

So, I said I would report back on temperature...
I closed it up yesterday evening having had it nice and hot for making pizza. I closed it up with both the chunky internal door and my single skin external door. From what I could see before going to bed the outside of the chunky door never got above 65C (150F) and was about 55C (130F) this morning (with the external door fully closed too, so head somewhat trapped in that void, albeit with an open chimey to vent heat).
When cooking pizza yesterday the oven side walls had maxed at about 450C (840F), and were at about 350c (660F) when I closed it up. There was still with a reasonable amount of chunky embers in the oven when I shut it up.
I opened the door 13 hours later to begin baking and side walls were still at 260C (500F). Pretty happy with that :-)
An hour later I opened her up to check on the pork roast and roast potatoes, walls still at 255C (490F) and spuds and roast looking good.
Cake is next, when it has cooled a bit... :-)