42" Pompeii in Paso Robles Ca.

[hubert_s]

Re: 42" Pompeii in Paso Robles Ca.

I used a mixture of fireclay and sand for leveling. I think that's what it says in the Pompeii manual.

Great job cutting the floor tiles so cleanly.

[UtahBeehiver]

Re: 42" Pompeii in Paso Robles Ca.

If you use a fireclay/sand mix, which I also used with a notched tile thinset trowel, the CaSi suck the moisture up immediately be work quickly or put some type of coating on the bottom of the CaSi. Believe it or not some people have put margarine. You can also do a dry mix as well.

[Novaslo]

Re: 42" Pompeii in Paso Robles Ca.

Ok that is what I will do - I have both on hand so it will be easy.
I will likely opt for a dry mix as I just need to level things off a bit.

I am looking forward to the next step.

[Novaslo]

Re: 42" Pompeii in Paso Robles Ca.

Ok the fiber board is cut and the Soldier course is started. Dealing with my first transition and have built a Jig based on the "3 cut - 2 Brick" Design.

It's getting exciting haha.

[Novaslo]

Re: 42" Pompeii in Paso Robles Ca.

I am going to tackle finishing mortaring the soldier course tomorrow. I have my door plan and transition ready for the first course. My door is 20" Wide. Should the door be 13" high? Is that the height of the center highest point? Or the sides?

As I build each course, should I step up the door with each course or just build the arch first?

Everything is going great and the saw allows me to pretty much address any strange cut....so that is good.

One challenge is the tiles are 2" high and the floor is an inside the dome style....This makes it tricky as the bricks are thicker than 2" but I am dealing with it.

I have my IT tool in place....any advise on tackling course number 1?

[Novaslo]

Re: 42" Pompeii in Paso Robles Ca.

Here is the transition that I ended up with. 20" wide with a nice easy endpoint for each course.

That should help.

[Novaslo]

Re: 42" Pompeii in Paso Robles Ca.

Hey Everyone, today was a full day of dome building. I learned a lot today.

So many of the things I encountered today, are written about in these forums. I struggled to learn how to mortar. This is pretty challenging considering I am using a jig that I learned about in these forums. This makes mortaring pretty challenging because there is so little space to mortar. With little room to mortar, I struggled all day to get it right.

Now on to the jig, I read Chipsters post many times and had to really think about it to figure out what was going on in order to actually make one. After finally understanding how it worked, I downloaded an app for my iPhone that shows you different degrees of tilt or level. Once I had that, building the jig started making sense.

The cuts today on course number one, worked out pretty good. I also needed some Shade as it was 100 degrees here today.

Either way, I am whooped,

I made a mistake and am using particle board of the cheapest kind for my floor attached to my IT.
It flexes and twists with the heat.
Should I go buy a real piece of plywood or something nice or simply leave it?

Here is my progress....

[Gulf]

Re: 42" Pompeii in Paso Robles Ca.

I replaced my "dead center" floor brick with a temporary "wooden" brick. Then covered the floor with cardboard.



That was after chunking the wobbly plywood floor for something more stable .

[Novaslo]

Re: 42" Pompeii in Paso Robles Ca.

Hmm that would work, in my case, I have an 18"X18" Forno Bravo tile. So that makes that a bit more of a challenge.

[UtahBeehiver]

Re: 42" Pompeii in Paso Robles Ca.

Interesting brick layout, reversing every other brick. No reason I can see why it won't work. Might affect how angles and bevels are calc. farther up the dome.

[Novaslo]

Re: 42" Pompeii in Paso Robles Ca.

Yea the reason that happened I think.....I had too much tilt on my Jig. after learning yesterday, I realized that I read the spreadsheet wrong and had 5 degrees of tilt where it should have been 1.2

This caused the result you see there. It made sense at the time but when I finally had time to think about it, I realized it was wrong.

Tonight I am going to do the next level and it calls for a tilt of 1.9 so that should put things back in line.

I also had trouble with my dome being a bit out of round, So after adjusting things and moving my IT a bit, I came to a pretty satisfactory positions for Sailor course #2.

I probably won't need much mortar on the next course as I was winging it a bit.

Does 1.9 sound right for a 42 in oven on course 2?

[UtahBeehiver]

Re: 42" Pompeii in Paso Robles Ca.

What I remember is the tapers held much at abt 5 degrees for most of the course except near the top. I did my oven before DJ made his spreadsheet. As far as the tilt, that is dictated by your IT, so the face of the brick in perpendicular to the center of the pivot point on the floor. Don't cut all you bricks for each course at once, you will need to make some adjustments to tapers and bevels to adjust for out of round, mortar joint creep, etc.

[hubert_s]

Re: 42" Pompeii in Paso Robles Ca.

Not sure if you plan to cut your bricks smaller so that your joints are staggered on the next course. If you do, you will need both smaller taper and bevel angles. The spreadsheet is not designed for that so I ended up throwing it away.

What worked for me is the following. I always used a smaller taper angle so that about 1/4" gap would open at the outside of the dome. I found this makes getting a narrow joint on the inside much easier.

As far as the bevel angle, I cut a couple of bricks with a slightly larger angle than on the previous course and dry fit them. Then, I checked which direction the V opens up and by how much. I then tilted the saw head either to the left or right, depending on the direction of the V. I did not use a protractor. Instead, I put a brick next to the blade. If I had to increase the angle, I put the brick at a distance equal to the gap and tilted until the saw blade touched the brick. If I had to decrease the angle, I put the brick flush and tilted until the gap between blade and brick was equal to the gap of the V. This came out close enough to perfect for my accuracy requirements every time. I think you could do the same thing with a tilt jig, but you would have to offset by only half the width of the V (with my tilt head, there is about a 2:1 ratio between pivot point and brick thickness). I know this method is mathematically not really correct, but it worked for me. I found it is a lot easier to eyeball the size of a gap than an angle and messing with a protractor.

[Novaslo]

Re: 42" Pompeii in Paso Robles Ca.

Hey Gang,
Well I nearly completed course 3 tonight. I changed my bevel from 5 down to 1.9 and that seemed to help. My angle looks good and the required mortar is pretty low.

Here is my challenge. As noted by Russell I was reversing each brick. This was caused by my jig setting at 5 - or so I thought.

I changed it to 1.9 tonight and that made course number 3 come in line. It is also the required bevel.

But, I still had to reverse each brick. I don't think it matters as my lines are very clean and straight on top. My gaps are pretty minimal.

For everyone using a jig, is there are right side up or down on the inside facing brick?

My jig is based on Chipsters style with a 5 degree edge angle and a 1.9 degree bevel.

The process to cut a brick is:
Put it in the jig, cut the right side of the brick
Turn over to the other side and cut the middle of the brick
Last take the brick and flip it over again 180 - move the brick to the right side of the saw and cut the 3rd cut on the left side.

3 cuts two bricks.
What am I doing wrong?

[hubert_s]

Re: 42" Pompeii in Paso Robles Ca.

I would recommend to dry fit two bricks. Use the IT to set the first one and put shims under it to keep it in place. Then, do the same for the second brick. Now, look at the vertical joint between them. If the sides are parallel, you are ok. If there is a V that opens to the top, your bevel angle is too large. If the V is inverted, the bevel angle is too small. Make an adjustment and try again. Save the two bricks that did not fit well, either for near the opening where nobody will see or for when you need smaller bricks.

I think the reason why you have to flip every other brick is because your bevel angle is too high. I suspect that if you installed them without flipping, you would get a bigger right-side up V than the inverted V you would have gotten at zero bevel angle and that is why you are flipping them. If you have precut a bunch of bricks for the remainder of this course, try them one course higher. You might get lucky and have very little V.

I don't know what tool you use to set the bevel angle. I posted earlier about the method I used to eyeball the adjustment with a tilting saw head. If you use a protractor and have difficulty getting the angle right, try measuring the height of the jig at a known offset from the pivot point instead. If you measure at 4x your brick height from the pivot point, raising or lowering the jig by 2x the gap observed during dry fitting should get you close.

I noticed that you used a small brick to keep the joints staggered. To make a smaller brick fit correctly, both bevel and taper angle have to be reduced. If you don't want to change the bevel angle on the jig and can live with a small V, you can put a brick shim between the fence and the brick to reduce the taper angle without having to readjust the jig. If you don't reduce the taper you may end up with a bigger gap on the inside of the dome as the outsides contact first. Of course, if you cut all your tapers on the low side, there is probably enough gap on the outside where you don't have to adjust the taper for a smaller brick.

Hang in there, I am sure it will all come together soon.