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Hi...I just thought I'd share a picture of a newly completed oven that we fired up for the first time last weekend. It is not a standard build and is therefore in this section, but I was (and therefore we were) determined to build an oven for as near enough to nothing as possible, using stuff I already had (Portland stone from a friend) and stuff from freecycle etc. I wish I had consulted this site first though as I last visited about 2 years ago and we went ahead and built this without remembering the need for insulation in the floor.
The oven sits direct on the ground on top of a layer of recycled herringbone bricks which sits on recycled flat paving slabs direct on the ground. We also put a slab of Portland stone in as a base for the oven which was constructed from recycled clay housebricks and clay dug direct from the ground by someone who was building a conservatory and needed to excavate. The good news therefore is that everything was absolutely free and my sole outlay was for 1.50 worth of stone cutting discs from ebay for my angle grinder. to cut bricks for the dome so that they cannot fall in. Everything is plastered and cemented with ungrogged clay which explains the cracking, but I have relied on cutting shaped bricks which will have less of a propensity to collapse. At the risk of spending cash (aargh) I am considering plastering the dome with some insulatory mix (although I do have a large bag of vermiculite that was destined for insulating my woodstove chimney).
The crude carvings were some I did years ago from the stone removed when we had our windowsills replaced and the chimney is built around a short piece of ventilation pipe I nabbed from a skip at the last place I worked. For good or for worse, I left the arch former in that was made from scrap dexion that I flattened on an anvil- and blame for doing my back in. This might not be such a bad idea as I'm sure we noticed some movement in the arch on its first firing
And to my mind, the end result speaks for itself...It looks quite good in the garden- It absolutely isn't perfect and might even collapse, but on its first outing we made pizza, naan bread and tandoori chicken and it was pretty damned good. When the fire really got going the flames shoot out of the chimney along with atypical black woodsmoke that reminded me of the smoke from a wood fired kiln I helped build years ago. If it does collapse it will be the arch...and I will know better how to cut the bricks for that now.
We have also invested about 30 quid in an infrared thermometer. I need to allow more than the 30 minutes of fire to get it up to a good temperature (I was misled by the fact that the thermometer went off scale above 500C, but of course that was just a surface temperature). So next phase is a door (most likely cut from a giant beech wood log with my chainsaw. I will allow a good thickness and hope that charred wood will act as a good insulator. And I hope to make some tools to manage the fire etc. What you see in the photo is an old shovel I had that I hammered flat on the anvil to act as a peel.
There you go- I hope you like it. If it falls down, I'll send those photo's in too. Good luck to all of you!
pete
The oven sits direct on the ground on top of a layer of recycled herringbone bricks which sits on recycled flat paving slabs direct on the ground. We also put a slab of Portland stone in as a base for the oven which was constructed from recycled clay housebricks and clay dug direct from the ground by someone who was building a conservatory and needed to excavate. The good news therefore is that everything was absolutely free and my sole outlay was for 1.50 worth of stone cutting discs from ebay for my angle grinder. to cut bricks for the dome so that they cannot fall in. Everything is plastered and cemented with ungrogged clay which explains the cracking, but I have relied on cutting shaped bricks which will have less of a propensity to collapse. At the risk of spending cash (aargh) I am considering plastering the dome with some insulatory mix (although I do have a large bag of vermiculite that was destined for insulating my woodstove chimney).
The crude carvings were some I did years ago from the stone removed when we had our windowsills replaced and the chimney is built around a short piece of ventilation pipe I nabbed from a skip at the last place I worked. For good or for worse, I left the arch former in that was made from scrap dexion that I flattened on an anvil- and blame for doing my back in. This might not be such a bad idea as I'm sure we noticed some movement in the arch on its first firing
And to my mind, the end result speaks for itself...It looks quite good in the garden- It absolutely isn't perfect and might even collapse, but on its first outing we made pizza, naan bread and tandoori chicken and it was pretty damned good. When the fire really got going the flames shoot out of the chimney along with atypical black woodsmoke that reminded me of the smoke from a wood fired kiln I helped build years ago. If it does collapse it will be the arch...and I will know better how to cut the bricks for that now.
We have also invested about 30 quid in an infrared thermometer. I need to allow more than the 30 minutes of fire to get it up to a good temperature (I was misled by the fact that the thermometer went off scale above 500C, but of course that was just a surface temperature). So next phase is a door (most likely cut from a giant beech wood log with my chainsaw. I will allow a good thickness and hope that charred wood will act as a good insulator. And I hope to make some tools to manage the fire etc. What you see in the photo is an old shovel I had that I hammered flat on the anvil to act as a peel.
There you go- I hope you like it. If it falls down, I'll send those photo's in too. Good luck to all of you!
pete
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