Show us your Door Thread

[Campmaki]

There are lots of questions about oven doors, but no official door thread. I thought it would be useful to consolidate a bunch of examples that showed different ways to build oven doors.

I'll start it off!

Door material:
Face is HOT ROLL SHEET / PLATE 0.060" (16 GA) Hot Rolled STEEL
Thermometer protector is HOT ROLL TUBE - SQUARE
0.625" OD x 0.065" Wall A36 Hot Rolled Mild Steel Square Tube

Insulation: Two inches of ceramic fiber blanket

Handles: Gate handles purchased from Home Depot. I was cautioned about using metal but they don't seem to get hot.

Cost: ~$55 if I don't count the welder. About $25 for the metal from Onlinemetals.com; $5 for the handles; $25 for the thermometer (from our hosts); Insulation was leftover from build

Weight: 10 pounds

How it's built: I cut the metal with a metal blade in a jigsaw. Outside plate was based on my entry arch form less 1/2 inch all the way around. The inside plate was based on my oven opening arch less 1/4" all the way around. I cut a 2" strip of steel to go around the outside and welded the whole thing together with a HF cheapy welder that I bought off of craigslist. The door was the first thing I ever welded - and it took a lot of grinding to get it smooth, but it came out pretty well. Took an afternoon to weld it.

How does it work: Pretty well. My temperature ramp about 100 degrees loss a day from the oven; third day temps are in the 250-300 degree range. Thermometer reliably reads 50 degrees lower than the temp my IR thermometer shows for the inside of the oven.

Favorite thing about the door: the weight.


What would I do to improve my door design: I could have made it deeper. Making it 2 1/2 or 3 inches deep would have given more insulation and not cost any more or taken any more time. And I still might add some rope gasket around the door to get a better seal.


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Made my door the same way, only I used stainless steel with 4 inches of ceramic board inside. works very well, my question is have you added a gasket to the back? If so what type of material did you use and any adhesive to hold it on? thanks Campmaki

[mrchipster]

Re: Show us your Door Thread

I havent even built my oven but I took the glass out of my dead indoor ovens door and bought an old pyrex dish for 50cents from a charity shop, ready for my double glazed door.

How is the door coming along? I love my pyrex pot lid door for baking.

[deejayoh]

Re: Show us your Door Thread

Kstronach - that first door was very pretty. Too bad it couldn't take the heat.

[kstronach]

Re: Show us your Door Thread

and here is my new door, nice and simple its a aerated concrete block cut to size to butt up against the reveal with a piece of ply cut to size and screwed on the front, some handles and a flue thermometer in and thats about it, going to add some stove rope round the edge for a better seal.

[kstronach]

Re: Show us your Door Thread

here was my first solid oak insulated door - took ages to make, ended up in flames unfortunately!

[TropicalCoasting]

Re: Show us your Door Thread

I havent even built my oven but I took the glass out of my dead indoor ovens door and bought an old pyrex dish for 50cents from a charity shop, ready for my double glazed door.

[SevenAcre]

Re: Show us your Door Thread

Just thought I'd pass this along...

So, for a door seal I thought first of a gasket rope, but then stumbled across LAVALOCK Hi-temp Nomex gaskets primarily used on smokers and BBQs. It's a self stick that actually really sticks, comes in 15 ft lengths for less than 20 bucks and is readily available (think major online superpower). IMO the stuff's great and is practically made for our application. Be careful though, there are two main types and the white is rated for higher temps.
-J

[mikku]

Re: Show us your Door Thread

I don't have handles even attached yet--only the stainless angle piece as shown. This does not get hot enough to require special gloves. I got a block of keyaki to make handles but have not gotten around to make them yet.

I don't have any current photos of the door, it is now soot stained from use. Mine has ceramic fiber sandwiched inside, maybe it is shown in a previous post but I forget.

[pikemonkey]

Re: Show us your Door Thread

Nice job with the doors and tools. you have a lot of talent working with metals. I went to a woodstove shop and bought rope designed as a seal for wood stove doors. Also bought some adhesive for gluing it around the perimeter of the door. So far it has worked great! Put it on sometime last year and shows no sign of wear or deterioration. The rope comes in a variety of sizes, don't remember what size I chose but it was pretty inexpensive--about $9.00 per meter. The cement was air set/heat set adhesive black good for temperatures up to 2000 F. My door looks like yours, has ceramic fiber inside but only about 2" thick. I still can remove the door without special gloves when the oven is 300+C.

Thanks for your comments. Closer up they're not perfect, but functional.

I have done similar as you describe with the rope seal and black adhesive.
The larger diameter stuff is twisted stove rope, but a!so has another set of strands wrapping around it to keep it all together. It is this that has broken down, causing the rope to fray everywhere. It should be good for 500 degC, but I might try some thinner stuff without the wrapping, or stove tape.

Not needing special gloves to remove my door but the handles fitted are too small to get a good grip. Thinking of buying a couple of cheap brick trowels and using the handles from them so they are open at the bottom if you get my drift.

[stonecutter]

Re: Show us your Door Thread

Nice job with the doors and tools. you have a lot of talent working with metals. I went to a woodstove shop and bought rope designed as a seal for wood stove doors. Also bought some adhesive for gluing it around the perimeter of the door. So far it has worked great! Put it on sometime last year and shows no sign of wear or deterioration. The rope comes in a variety of sizes, don't remember what size I chose but it was pretty inexpensive--about $9.00 per meter. The cement was air set/heat set adhesive black good for temperatures up to 2000 F. My door looks like yours, has ceramic fiber inside but only about 2" thick. I still can remove the door without special gloves when the oven is 300+C.

I used ceramic rope to fill the thermal breaks on my oven, then painted a slurry of Portland and acryl 60 to encapsulate the fibers. I don't think it will ever break down, the vent area never gets hot enough where the rope is.

[mikku]

Re: Show us your Door Thread

Nice job with the doors and tools. you have a lot of talent working with metals. I went to a woodstove shop and bought rope designed as a seal for wood stove doors. Also bought some adhesive for gluing it around the perimeter of the door. So far it has worked great! Put it on sometime last year and shows no sign of wear or deterioration. The rope comes in a variety of sizes, don't remember what size I chose but it was pretty inexpensive--about $9.00 per meter. The cement was air set/heat set adhesive black good for temperatures up to 2000 F. My door looks like yours, has ceramic fiber inside but only about 2" thick. I still can remove the door without special gloves when the oven is 300+C.

[stonecutter]

Re: Show us your Door Thread

I like that rake!

[pikemonkey]

Re: Show us your Door Thread



Made mine from stainless steel.
It's a 3 1/2 inch thick shell, now packed with calsil and vermiculite and backed with some old T+G oak floor boards.


Also managed to make a couple of peels, an ember rake, and a bracket for a wire broom.

the handles are all interchangeable, and can be screwed into each other depending how long you want them.

The door is heavy though, and so far I've used 16mm fibre glass stove rope as a seal, but this is falling apart after a few weeks use - any better ideas would be welcome for this.

[Greenman]

Re: Show us your Door Thread

If you are thinking of using aluminium for your door as I did then you will be safe. Who would heat the oven to those temps and then put the door in place.

Aluminium rivets work fine too, better to keep the metals similar. The temptation to overdesign/over specify projects is ever present and is often the difference between doing something easily and affordable and needing to mortgage the house and get an engineering degree to cook a pizza.

[mikku]

Re: Show us your Door Thread

What is the point of firing an oven to that temperature anyway? If you could, what are you going to cook? Use a little common sense and fire to the temperatures you need for your bake or roast--Don't need anything even close to the melting point of aluminum!

If you are really worried, search the internet for tiles from the space shuttle, think that they are a special type of ceramic. But in the mean time, lets get back to earth!