Starting my build

[almondsurf]

The first pizza! I'd say I need to work on my dough recipe

The oven was letting out some heat. I ran my hand around the outside of the over (about an inch from the surface) to see if there were many heat leaks... and there were. I could feel 2 spots that were particularly hotter than the rest of the oven. I put more insulation around those areas, seen in the next post.

[almondsurf]

The night I put all the insulation on, I had it looking so good. I thought to myself, "I'll get up early and work on the lath since it's getting so late, I'll just put a tarp on it till morning." Bad idea... A wind storm came through the night (luckily it woke me up) and I found myself out with a flashlight at 3am picking up pieces of insulation all over the back yard. I think I found 95% of the insulation and was able to pack most of it back on the next morning.

I used lath and chicken wire (mostly because I had some extra chicken wire laying around). The lath was easy, I just used some 3" screws and gently screwed them into the side of the perlcrete base, cut the sides down for shap (big thank you to forno bravo for posting those how-to videos on youtube!) and ran a piece of twin through the top of the lath to hold it in place tight to the dome.

Then for the chicken wire, I just twisted the ends to attache it to the lath. I figured it just needs to stay in place enough for the base coat layer. It worked pretty well.

But I learned that stuccoing an oven is a pretty tricky task.

[almondsurf]

The stucco process was quite difficult having never done any stucco. I laid the scratch coat of stucco on top of the lath. This was probably the easiest layer. I think it may have slightly compressed the insulation. I wish I would have put a layer of perlcrete as a light filler as I had planned, but I thought 2.5" of FB was sufficient. For this layer, I was just trying to fill in spots and create the shape I was looking for. After I scarred the surface of the scratch coat, I went and laid out the design of the oven decoration.

[DavidApp]

This is the finish I am working in for my oven. I am sticking thin pieces of sandstone to the Stucco brown coat.

David

[almondsurf]

Wow David, That looks great! I can't imagine how long that would take. I have a WHOLE new respect and admiration for all these ovens I see on this forum! I will post the rest of my oven pictures soon. I have all but the base coat stuccoed.

Do you have a picture of the front of your oven? I'm curious to see how it looks with that awesome arch you made.

[Johnnyd943]

Great Job AS ... Kudos to your WFO Project (Nice looking yard as well)...

I am in the final stages of researching my WFO in SoCal.... Sand-Mounted ...or may go with a cast ironpony mold concept.

Might I ask you a few questions?...

Did you end up using Portland Cement in your DIY mix or CA cement as was mentioned by another member ?
Any regrets or advice about using the DIY recipe?
Was your 10-sack estimate enough material to complete the shell?
SS-Needles ... Needed or Not?
Where did you get your Poly Fibers for the mix ?
Do you feel that a 2" wall thickness was enough refractory for good performance ?

Thank you for taking the time to share your experience...

Johnnyd

[Johnnyd943]

Nice Job !

[DavidApp]

Hello Almondsurf

Sorry about the delay getting back with the photo but I have been out of town working.

David

[almondsurf]

Sorry Johnny, I haven't checked back for a LONG time because frankly, I couldn't figure out how to log in. Then today, I saw the log in bar at the top of the screen so I can reply. I'm sure this info is too late, but for anyone wanting to know...

Q: Did you end up using Portland Cement in your DIY mix or CA cement as was mentioned by another member ?
A: I ended up using Portland and did not to CA. I am so glad I didn't use CA as it ended up being 112 degrees the day I did my dome. The CA would have been even harder to work with. Being so hot was both a good and a bad thing. My refrac mix didn't sag at all because it dried so fast, but because it dried so fast, it was difficult to pack it on and I now have little heat spaces (where the Portland didn't bond enough to the other layers) throughout the dome. I'm sure the CA would have been fine in other conditions, but I liked the way I did it based on the conditions I was dealing with.

Q: Any regrets or advice about using the DIY recipe?
A: Not really, other than in may case I made the mix a little dry. (see question above). The mix was fine, but I should have wet it down and troweled it smooth to try to close up some heat gaps that occurred. The recipe is sound, I'd use it again, although on my next build, I'll probably do fire brick. Casting is more of a process (pain) than I realized. You can't do a little at a time, you have to do the whole dome at once. I'm pretty busy, so I would have preferred doing a little here and a little there to complete the dome, rather than my typical, "Honey, It's 7am and this'll only take a couple hours." Then, as night is falling..."I'll be right in, I'm almost finished."

Q: Was your 10-sack estimate enough material to complete the shell?
A: I actually had plenty left over. I used a little less than 3/4 of the mix over all.

Q: SS-Needles ... Needed or Not?
A: After all said and done, I would say defiantly use SS needles. I was not worried at all when digging out the sand after it had sufficient time to dry. If I didn't use the needles, I'm sure I would have been crossing my fingers that the whole thing didn't just cave in. The only down side is I have a few needles here and there that I can see sticking out into the inner dome. But there really aren't many. I pulled the ones out that I could get to. There might be 2 or 3 that I couldn't get to, but they are only like 1/4" long so I really don' care or notice them.

Q: Where did you get your Poly Fibers for the mix ?
A: That was one of the easiest things to acquire. I just went to a small hardware store where they sell the poly rope by the foot and bought a few feet of nice thick rope. It looks like this: http://nirmalagroup.in/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/parapro-polypropylene-ropes12.jpg Then I just cut it up about one inch peaces, and separated out the fibers. Then just toss 'em into the mixer with the rest of your mix.

Q: Do you feel that a 2" wall thickness was enough refractory for good performance ?
A: For what I am doing, it has been fine. I don't find the need to have it 500 degrees the next morning. I make pizzas at 1k degrees at the top of the dome, 750 degrees on the hearth. After pizza, we will often spread the coals across the hearth, leave them to burn for 15 - 20 min, and take the coals out. Then we will through in a few loafs of bread. The oven will stay nice and toasty for several hours after the coals have been removed. 2" was fine, I'm sure 3" would be better, but would also require longer burn in time to reach peak saturation, using up more wood (which is not easy to come by around here), so I'm happy.

I'm sorry this is coming so late, but I hope it helps...

I posted a video of how to make pizza dough and you can see my oven in action at the end of the video if you're interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfstz7c8xu4e