Mongo's 42" CT Build

[SteelandStone]

Re: Mongo's 42" CT Build

Overall I would say it came out great. I really like the edge profile you did, and the corner pillars are awesome. As anyone that works with concrete on a regular basis knows, It happens. I have on several occasions thought to my self "Man that pour went great" only to pull the forms and go "WHAT the HECK" . Can't wait to see what you do next.
P.S. This early winter weather is the Pits, I still need a good 4-5 days of no freezing night time temps to finish mine.

[mongota]

Re: Mongo's 42" CT Build

I'll have to title this post "The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly".

The Good? The idea of using the Schedule 40 PVC to make the ogee edge of the hearth cap slab. Worked out well. Easy to fabricate, easy to assemble.

The Bad? Planning the pour. I wanted to get the pour done before a cold snap was scheduled to hit town. I finished the form late in the day and didn't start mixing concrete until just before sunset. The slab plus filling the CMU cores was about a 39 bag pour, and I was mixing by hand. I finished a couple of hours after sunset using some halogen lights to light up the work site.



Overall the pour went well. The form held up fine. No form blowouts, no real negative issues. I think I worked at a pretty good pace. The slab as a whole? Here you go, first an overall shot:



A close up of the bullnose corner:



Overall not too bad. Some voids, which I wanted. I'll slurry fill them later on. Ah...but what about The Ugly? Well, here you go:

The Ugly?: The strange part is that this happened right where I finished the pour for the entire slab. The mix had great workability. As I was finishing up I was thinking it was almost too loose. When I was placing it, I'd use my margin trowel to work the mix into the PVC ogee. But apparently not here. The weird thing is that when I vibrated the form by banging the outside with a 2-lb hammer, it didn't "collapse" in this section to fill the PVC.

Grrrr.



To add insult to self-induced injury, this is the FRONT edge of my slab!

Overall I'm happy. But geez.

Oh well. I'm gonna go out and mix up a small batch of pigmented mortar and do a little fill work.

[mongota]

Re: Mongo's 42" CT Build

Thanks Tony.

The pour went well. The slab is 5-1/2" thick and about 80" square, and I wanted to color the concrete, so to save on pigment I was running two batches of mix; pigmented for the edges of the slab and unpigmented for the core of the slab.

I ended up using PVC to make the covered bullnose edge. Took a length of 2" PVC schedule 40 pipe and ran it through the table saw to rip it into quarter-circles. Took a length of 4" PVC and ripped it in half. The forms went together okay, and the mitered corners seemed good and tight.



I didn't get started mixing until just before sunset, so I had the work lights set up outside and finished up in the dark. It was a little chilly out last night, it took about 4 or 5 hours before enough water had bled off enough to hit it with a trowel. I think I did the final troweling sometime between 11pm and midnight!

The ringing of the metal trowel on concrete coupled with the howls of the coyotes made for some interesting night music.

[Tonyp]

Re: Mongo's 42" CT Build

Welcome back! Looking really awesome. Wish you the best on getting all that concrete mixed for the hearth slab, that and a small pile of ibuprofen..

[mongota]

Re: Mongo's 42" CT Build

Been away for a bit, I'm back in the oven construction business for a few days.

After casting the arches, I let them cure for a few weeks. A couple of days ago I cast the lintels over the hearth doorways. It was raining when I did it, so no photos.

Yesterday I stood the arches up and mortared them in place.





Today is supposed to be fairly warm before more rain and cold arrive, so I'm going to try to form up and cast my hearth slab today. This pallet should be empty when I'm done. I calculated about 40 bags for the slab.



Gonna be a bit of a day with the wheelbarrow and mason's hoe.

[mongota]

Re: Mongo's 42" CT Build

This will be my last post for a while. I'll be on the road for a bit, plus I need the arches to cure before I move them.

Arch in the form:



Arch out of the form:



These were pretty hard to wire brush. Couldn't take off as much cream as I could with the pillars. But they are what they are.

[mongota]

Re: Mongo's 42" CT Build

Kind of an "oh crap!" moment today.

I built the form for casting the arches that will surround my hearth doors. Got distracted by family life in the middle of it all. Then realized the sun was going down and if I'm going to mix the concrete I'd better get on it pronto.

I'm casting this with the form flat on the my pool patio. I'll strip the form tomorrow and let it cure/strengthen in place for a few weeks before I stand it up and set it against the hearth.

It was a 3-bag mix of Quikrete with one bottle of concrete colorant. All went well with the pour. I just finished cleaning up my tools and started to walk off when I saw my two 10-foot lengths of rebar laying on the ground.

Egads.

I don't think I've ever bent 1/2" rebar this quickly. Shaped the first while holding it over the form. Cut the excess length away. Then used the first piece as a pattern for the second.

I set the first piece on the still slightly loose mix and used my hammer and a piece of wood to pound it about 4" deep into the 6" thick mix. I then moved the concrete around with my trowel and pushed the second rebar about 2" deep into the mix. "Massaged" the concrete again, troweled it again, then walked away.

It all looked okay in the end, but things were hectic for about 10 minutes.

Just came in from giving it a hard once-over with my trowel. Looks good, at least what I can see. Fingers crossed tomorrow when I take the form apart. I think the rebar stayed pretty much centered in the form.

[stonecutter]

Re: Mongo's 42" CT Build

Matt, I'm in Essex.

The voids will certainly be filled. I'll just wait for all four posts and my two arches to be up and cured to their final color. Should end up around a medium gray or a light charcoal color depending on words used to describe it. Then I'll probably use a black-black portland/sand mixture applied with a grout float to pack and fill the voids. When that has set up, I'm thinking I'll lightly brush it with a bristle brush back down to the original texture so only the voids are filled, with maybe a trace of black shadowing left in some of the currently existing texture.

Ah who knows? I really can't describe what exact steps I'll do, nothing's set in concrete (ugh). I'll do whatever needs to be done to get to where I want it to be.

It's all a big experiment!

Essex is a nice town, how are the leaves this year? Good idea to fill those holes, It'd be a shame to have the columns get ruined from freeze thaw.

[Gulf]

Re: Mongo's 42" CT Build

.............A question...you have a chimney damper (nice work!) and I see you have both an inner door for the dome arch as well as an outer door for the outer arch. Do you close the damper and use the outer door to cook (the sausage photo) in the arch transition area too?............

Mongo,
Thanks for the compliments. I actually have two doors for the inner arch. One is insulated and the other is just a single sheet of carbon steel. I have an unisulated blast door with a thermometer that can be used both inside the entry and outside. I do have what I call a storm door, also. But, it is only for closing the oven up from the weather.

The damper was fun to build. And I do use it some times, along with the blast door, to help regulate the temperature of the vent area. My thoughts were that, it would help me with that, and also for smoking meats. For the most part though, the damper stays wide open. I'm glad that I took the time to include the damper. I will keep playing with it, as it does help make the oven a little more versatile. But, I can't say that I would recommend for someone else to include one in theirs. In my yard alone, there are too many other smokers and grills for me too tie up the oven with that for very long .

PS: Some great progress going on there! I am a fairly patient man. Lets see if you are .

[mongota]

Re: Mongo's 42" CT Build

Well, I sort of cheated my own schedule the other day, which made the previous day a bit more productive than I thought it'd be.

Because the bracing for my corner pillar forms wraps around my entire hearth, I figured after I took the forms off of my first two corner pillars I'd have to wait a few days for them to cure before I used the pillars themselves as support for the forms for casting the third and fourth pillars.

While I was cleaning up after that first pour I realized I had four 12" CMUs that, when stacked next to the just unformed pillars, would act as standoffs for the form bracing. So I cleaned up my pillar forms, screwed them back together, and cast the other two pillars.

[mongota]

Re: Mongo's 42" CT Build

Mongo,
Great looking work! I'm looking forward to the finale .

Well, you're going to have to be a patient man! I'm doing the hearth this fall but I don't plan on doing the brick dome and stone igloo enclosure until spring.

I did something a little similar on some corbels and a decorative keystone.

I just went through your Picasa album. "Wow". "WOW!" The level of planning and detail, the skill of execution? I'm thoroughly impressed. I really like what you did with the cast concrete work and with the insets, etc. Very, very nice. Your finish materials, everything coordinates so well. I really like the wrapping of the scissor trusses. It's layer upon layer nicely executed detail.

I like how you isolated the dome from the vent area, that's the same idea I'm planning on using.

A question...you have a chimney damper (nice work!) and I see you have both an inner door for the dome arch as well as an outer door for the outer arch. Do you close the damper and use the outer door to cook (the sausage photo) in the arch transition area too?

Best, Mongo

[Gulf]

Re: Mongo's 42" CT Build

Mongo,
Great looking work! I'm looking forward to the finale .
I did something a little similar on some corbels and a decorative keystone. I did not fill the voids. I did like the weatherd look, but I did not like the final color. I thinned some liquid charcaol cement color and brushed it in to add a little more color. I wiped it back down with a wet cloth to clean the aggregate. Later, I sealed it all with a flat acrylic masonry sealer.

[mongota]

Re: Mongo's 42" CT Build

Matt, I'm in Essex.

The voids will be filled with a slurry sometime down the road, I want to do the treatment at the same time to maintain a fairly even shade of charcoal across all treated surfaces. I'll just wait for all four posts and my two arches to be up and cured to their final color. Should end up around a medium gray/charcoal color.

I really can't describe what exact steps I'll do, I'll just do whatever needs to be done to get to where I want it to be.

It's all a big experiment!

[stonecutter]

Re: Mongo's 42" CT Build

Nice build! What part of CT are you in?

The pillars look cool, but you should fill those voids or you're going to see spalling after a few winters.

[leetheldc]

Re: Mongo's 42" CT Build

Those look fantastic if you putting that effort of craftsmanship in this early stage I bet your oven will turn out great! Looking forward to see how they dry keep the pics coming.