40" Indoor Pompeii in NNY

[GianniFocaccia]

Re: 40" Indoor Pompeii in NNY

Tony,

You're way past the difficult part and well on your way to closing the dome. Looking fine, excellent brick work. I really like how you made the face of the oven arch flush with the front of the oven, saving entryway space.

I forget, will you be flaring your entryway?

[Tonyp]

Re: 40" Indoor Pompeii in NNY

Hi John,

I take your comments as a great compliment! I have often gone back to your build thread for inspiration as it is one of the finest builds I have seen.

My corner space is more rectangular shape than square so the angles and dimensions have been rather tricky and have lead to some tinkering with the oven and entry design. I basically started with the landing area and outer arch placement that was acceptable to my wife based on the current cabinet configuration to both sides. From there I figured out the oven opening direction angle and center point. Since I knew where the outer arch would be I could figure out where the outside edge of the oven arch would be to allow for enough depth to place the plate for the stove pipe connection. From there I made several paper templates of various oven widths and kept tinkering with the oven dimensions and center point placement. As the oven got slightly larger the dome arch kind of 'sank' into the face of the oven, because the location of the two arches was fixed. This also lead to the inside edge of the oven arch bricks getting pushed into the oven space. I didn't want the inside of the arch bricks to extend into the oven space too much, so I ended up making the lower arch bricks less deep there. The dome bricks have more depth as the dome slopes inward so there are some crazy compound angles going on!

The entryway will be flared. The outer arch will be 5" wider than the inner and a little over 1" taller. I think this will provide plenty of visibility and ability to work the oven without having to be directly in line. It will also be deeper on one side than the other because of the rectangular corner and odd angles.

[Tonyp]

Re: 40" Indoor Pompeii in NNY

Just a few more pics of the dome.

Row 10 I think.. Was getting to the point where the bricks were getting quite narrow

Row 11 and 12 I decided to make the bricks a bit wider and end with just 8 in the middle for the final course before the plug. I tried to stagger the joints as much as possible but a few kind of line up here and there when you go with a wider brick and want to make them all the same width.


Shot from inside with the plug installed.

Close up of the top, inside the dome.

Final height of the dome 20 1/4". I am pretty happy with that considering my IT pivot was 1 1/4" above the floor.

[SteelandStone]

Re: 40" Indoor Pompeii in NNY

Great job on the dome!! Won't be long now.

[kbartman]

Re: 40" Indoor Pompeii in NNY

Awesome Brick work, tight mortar joints and very symmetrical, that's a oven to be proud of.

Won't be long now.

"That's what the monkey said when they cut off his tail."....LOL....


I can smell the pizza cooking soon

Congratulations

[AJR]

Re: 40" Indoor Pompeii in NNY

Nice work Tony. I too am building a wfo except outdoors and using steel welded frame and heavy timber with joists. My opinion: The only concern i would have with your stand design, with respect to the overall weight, is to shore the floor from under your walking surface (joist) to the floor below with loly-columns or timber posts. This can minimize any bowing.

[Tonyp]

Re: 40" Indoor Pompeii in NNY

I am getting excited for sure! Still have a fair amount of work to design/build the entrance way before I can get the stove pipe hooked together and start burning inside the oven. I have had one of those small 1500 watt space heaters blowing into the dome for a few days. The outside of the brick gets warm after a while so hopefully driving out at least some of the moisture.

AJR, the kitchen is over the garage so putting a post under the stove wouldn't work too well. We did plan on the stove when we had the kitchen rebuilt and had 3 of those laminated structural beams sandwiched between the regular floor joists where the oven was to be placed. Those beams are connected to the wood on top of the block wall of garage on one end, and to a steel I beam which spans across the middle of the floor on the other. The floor sloped a bit initially so I had to do some leveling before building the support frame. I don't think the floor will bow, but wouldn't be surprised if the block wall in the corner settles a little. The whole oven stand and oven are free standing though so if the floor slope changes slightly it shouldn't affect the oven integrity other than making it slightly out of level.

[GianniFocaccia]

Re: 40" Indoor Pompeii in NNY

Great job, Tony! Your oven is a thing of beauty.

[AJR]

Re: 40" Indoor Pompeii in NNY

Your brickwork is fantastic! very neat and clean. where in NY are you from, I live in Rockland county, NY.

[Tonyp]

Re: 40" Indoor Pompeii in NNY

Your brickwork is fantastic! very neat and clean. where in NY are you from, I live in Rockland county, NY.

Hi AJR,

Way up eastern shore Lake Ontario area. I grew up near Rockland county outside of Paramus, NJ so I am familiar with the area. We used to go to the Rockland Bakery sometimes to pick up bread.

For those not familiar with my current neck of the woods, Spring lasts for about 2 weeks in June, then Summer for about 2 months and Fall for another couple weeks at the end of Sept. Not a whole lot of time for cooking outdoors;> , hence the desire for an indoor oven. Although if was to redo things over I would consider redesigning so the oven was outside and the entrance came through the wall so as to have much more space for flexibility with design and shape.

[Tonyp]

Re: 40" Indoor Pompeii in NNY

So I am mostly caught up with the current build status. I thought I would post a few pictures of the brick jig etc. I removed the rubber thingy on the table of the HF saw and sanded the aluminum down to level it a bit. There are holes through the table which I found to be handy to screw jigs up from the bottom to hold them to the table.

Brick cutting jig made from 2 x 8 pressure treated pine. The bolt for angle adjustment goes up through the bottom. There is a t nut in between as well as one on top (visible) to set the angle. It was also easy to adjust the oak strips for the other angle as needed.

[Tonyp]

Re: 40" Indoor Pompeii in NNY

Moving on to the next phase in construction, the landing area..

Years ago my wife procured a number of 4 x 8 slabs of marble from the local hospital when they were remodeling and removing all these old bathroom stalls made of marble. How she convinced the construction crew to carry these things down and load them into a pickup is beyond me.. they must way about 400 pounds. Most are 3/4" thick but there were some 1 1/4 also. We have used the marble around the house for various projects from windowsills and an island top in the new kitchen. She wants use some of the thicker stone as part of the oven landing and the thinner stone for a vertical face to tie it together with the other marble stuff in the kitchen...oh how I love working with huge slabs of marble..

I sketched out the design and layout for the landing. One row of firebrick across the oven opening followed by a slab of marble which would extend out beyond the outer arch. So how to tackle cutting to shape a 1 1/4" thick 36" long 15" wide chunk of marble. I have a dry cutting diamond blade for the skil saw a 10" dry cutting blade I could put on the table saw and the 10" HF wet saw. I was preferring the wet saw as it makes a pretty good cut. After mulling over the situation for a few days I came up with a jig to hold the slab and allow me to maneuver the stone around and use the sliding table on the HF saw..

Behold the .. uh slab jig!
and with the marble for cutting..

The long side cut was longer than the travel distance of the HF table so I would have to cut about halfway then pull the table back and slide the slab forward to make the full cut.

[Tonyp]

Re: 40" Indoor Pompeii in NNY

oh in case you are wondering, I used the skil saw and dry cutting blade to rough cut out the initial piece. Which made a huge cloud of marble dust in the basement...

[Tonyp]

Re: 40" Indoor Pompeii in NNY

Preparing the landing area for the row of brick and marble slab. The grey insulation is 1/2" thick microsil from Zircar Ceramics. I am going put a 3/8" notch on the underside of the brick so there will be roughly a 1/16"-1/8" wide x 1/2" deep air gap between the oven floor and the row of bricks in the landing area. I was thinking to just let that gap fill with ash. Does that sound reasonable?

[Tonyp]

Re: 40" Indoor Pompeii in NNY

Landing and entrance area is starting to come together. The row of bricks and marble are all set. Started cutting some of the bricks for the entry and checking layout. The two wood blocks are the location for the ends of the outer arch.


Still unsure if I should do anything with that 1/2" wide section of brick that is about 1/8" from the dome arch. Leave it as just an air gap or put something in there.. I picked up some of the Rutland graphite/fiberglass rope to play around with but not sure if that would increase or decrease the heat flow from the arch dome across to the entry bricks. I could also put in a little strip of ceramic board or microsil and just leave it shy of the brick face by an 1/8" or so.