Flue redesign

[icrackracquets]

Hello. It's been about a year since i posted or really looked at the forum in general. In typical slacker fashion i finished my oven and left the forum whole enjoyed/figured out how to use it.

Well now I'm back. I finished the oven roughly a year ago and have used at least once a month since then. I've had consistent problems with smoke coming out the front. I know that part of this is because it's a new oven. But I'm also quite sure that a large part is that i put very little thought into the design of the flue gallery. My gallery is one brick length long. The flue/chimney hole was simply a single hole in the middle of my arch, 2 brick heights wide, 1/2 brick length long

From simply looking at other builds I've decided to dismantle the gallery, grind down a channel along the whole length of the archway in order to create a better smoke catcher. The channel varies from about 30mm to 10mm deep at the ends. Is this channel adequate or do i need to grind away more material?

The picture shows the back of the flue gallery that sits against the arch of the pizza oven. I apologize if my description is unclear.

[david s]

What is your oven's internal diameter? and does the gallery transition to a stainless fue pipe? If so what is its diameter and height?

As you've pointed out all new ovens are smoky until they're really dried out. Other causes are wet or green wood, overloaded chamber, poor gallery design, inadequate flue diameter or chimney cross sectional area, constricting bends (horizontal) in the flue pipe. In addition, because the front flue design is a cross flow system bending the flame sideways, it is always smoky when first lit, particularly if too much fuel is in the chamber at the start. This problem can easily be remedied by a very small starting fire until the flue has heated sufficiently to crete decent draw.

[icrackracquets]

It's a 36" with 6" chimney. I also had some uneven geometry changes from rectangular to square to circular. That's another thing I've fixed this time around. I'm just wondering if this channel i ground out large enough to make a difference or if i should take off more material