42 inch Pompeii Design Build

[antzvu]

Thank you for all the advice! I changed the Fire Brick Floor to exclude the first row of soldiers and simply laid them on top of the floor. I also decided on the oven door look I wanted. While the arching half circle does look nice, I've fallen in love with the arch over the vertical door design. The door also includes the arching tapered bricks to be cut from full size.

[UtahBeehiver]

Much better set up. Here is a pic from Mr. Chipster showing how a tapered inner arch like the one you want is defined using an IT.

[antzvu]

Thanks Russell. I'm DEFINITELY going to utilize IT to create the inner arch.

[antzvu]

I've seen two styles of ITs.

One with a head that is adjustable (length) and one that is fixed.

I'm trying to build the second row of soldiers and there is a small gap because of the circular angle. I'm looking at other people's builds and no one seems to be tapering their first row of soldiers to match the circumference of the dome shape. The first row is only tapered to other adjacent brick in the row.

My initial solution would be to butt up the surfaces and simple use a fixed radius length and adjust for it. But I noticed the second row creates a huge angled gap. Does that mean the majority of folks are tapering 3-4 edges of the brick. I was under the impression that most people were tapering about 2 sides if at all.

[UtahBeehiver]

First, center of IT needs to be at the center of thr brick, not lower or upper half Suggest an adjustable IT so you have flexibility to adjust. No need to taper bottom or top sides only vertical sides to prevent inverted v joints. Mortar is your friend. Nomenclature, you are actually using 1/2 headers, not soldiers.

[JRPizza]

I designed my IT to be adjustable, thinking it might be handy to be able to change the length. When I cut my floor bricks I attached a marker holder and extended the IT about 4.5 inches to mark the outside diameter of the dome. Then when I attached my angle bracket I was able to adjust the length to get the ID of the dome in proper location. Because I was able to get my pivot and rotation point almost at floor level, I didn't need to do any adjustment during my build.

[terratree]

Love the sketches - Sketchup or something else ?

[antzvu]

Love the sketches - Sketchup or something else ?

Yes. I'm simply using the free version of Sketchup. I consider it pretty robust. The PRO version is nifty, but as the name suggests, if you're not a Pro, I don't see why you would need the Pro features that badly.

[UtahBeehiver]

Back on post #17, the slope (green line) is the same angle as the centerline of the IT rod.

[JRPizza]

Here is what I did - hope this helps. I placed a brick on top of my door form and adjusted it fore aft to be in the right position. Then I put a dome brick in my IT and placed it next to the brick to "eyeball" the cut line. I could have cut the angle a little "flatter" so the brick would touch at the inside but have a gap at the OD to pack mortar in, but I hadn't figured all that out at the time. The line just below my brick represents the ID curve of the oven which I drew with a pen in my IT, and the line in the upper right was a mistake