Mongo's 42" CT Build

[mongota]

Thanks.

I have it covered with a concrete curing blanket. It's a burlap and poly blanket. Not perfect, as the blanket doesn't conform perfectly well to the compound curves of the dome shape. But it helps hold the moisture in. when I pull the blanket off to re-wet the dome, it's still a bit damp.

[mongota]

Got home last night after a few days being out of town, so today was the day to get the first coat of Thoroseal on the dome. Painted it on, worked it into the surface, then back brushed it. Really helped to wet the dome first to minimize the Thoroseal siezing on the dry shell.

[mongota]

Second coat of Thoroseal. Added a little carbon black colorant.

[Lburou]

Mongo, your build shows exceptional conceptional planning and remarkable details. Well done!

[mongota]

I appreciate the kind words, thanks Lee!

I'm going to let the shell rest a bit, next up I think I'll come up with a plan for the decorative front arch and vent assembly. I'll probably end up casting a decorative front arch, two side pieces (one for each side of the vent arch), and a cap for the top of the vent arch that the chimney stove pipe will pass through.

I might try to take a photo of the front of the oven and convert it to a line drawing via photoshop. Then try out some sketches on that drawing to see if I can get reasonably pleasing proportions.

[mongota]

Whelp, the first WFO meal was tonight, but no pics! It wasn't really planned, it just happened. Roast chicken, plus roasted asparagus and onions. Picked a few peaches off the trees, sliced them up and put them in the oven for about 10 minutes, then served them over vanilla ice cream for desert. Pretty darn bueno.

[WarEagle90]

No pics? Didn't happen . Sounds like a great meal, Mongo. I especially like the roasted peaches and nilla ice cream, mmmm, mmmmm, good.

[mongota]

Something certainly happened, because im full! Lol

[mongota]

Did a couple of pizza sessions over the past few nights. Four pies in yesterday, four today.

Yesterday used a 65% hydration dough. Rose quite nice, but a bit too wet, sticky to handle. Crust taste and texture was good though. Changed to a 60% hydration for tonight's dough. Much better to handle for my circumstances. Dough was still moist, pliable, just slightly sticky. After cooking the crust still had nice crumb and texture. Might try a 62%. Been going by weight with regards to the dough recipe. Caputo Tipo Blue Bag.

Todays fire was hotter than yesterday's. After the burn down i banked the embers on the side of the floor and got great color on top and bottom.

Still mixing things up to improve results. Once the initial fire gets going I've been pushing it from the entry into the middle of the floor, then when ready to cook i push the embers to the side, swab the floor, and cook.

Next time I'm going to move the fire to the side of the dome and let it burn down there. Then swab the floor and cook in the middle. See how the top cooks versus the bottom. I feel my floor has been too hot compared to the dome.

My dough shaping and handling needs to improve. Cooking technique has improved with each pie.

[josiahsanner]

Awesome build and great looking Pie. I am feeling inspired...but it is pouring rain outside, and I can't get my stand built till next week. I did get the pad poured and working on finalizing my dome designs. Anything you would have done differently now that you are using your WFO (other than build it years ago)? Size, Insulation, height, door opening etc?

[SableSprings]

Awesome build and great looking Pie. I am feeling inspired...but it is pouring rain outside, and I can't get my stand built till next week. I did get the pad poured and working on finalizing my dome designs. Anything you would have done differently now that you are using your WFO (other than build it years ago)? Size, Insulation, height, door opening etc?

Welcome Josiah! There is a thread that addresses your question...good reading while planning your design. Here's the link:

https://community.fornobravo.com/for...change?t=12453

Mongo - good looking pizza...and I think all of us are in a constant quest for getting better at using our ovens and developing "perfect pizza" skills. Although, one of my neighbors pointed out, you really don't want to make the perfect pizza because then what would be the point of making pizza again since it would always be less than that perfect one... (Our comment at any food related party is now, "Wow, this is ALMOST perfect...you'll have to keep trying! ")

[mongota]

Awesome build and great looking Pie. I am feeling inspired...but it is pouring rain outside, and I can't get my stand built till next week. I did get the pad poured and working on finalizing my dome designs. Anything you would have done differently now that you are using your WFO (other than build it years ago)? Size, Insulation, height, door opening etc?

Based on the use so far:

Love the overall size, the door proportion is fine, it draws well. No problems accessing the interior. Because I'm a novice, I'm only cooking one pie at a time, so a 42" is way oversized for that. But I wanted a large size for cooking full meals in as well. Enough interior room for a couple of tuscan-type grills, as well as possibly rotisserie cooking...though with omni-directional heat, a rotisserie really isn't a requirement. So the size is good.

It's a bit premature of me to write this now because of my limited cooking experience. But I have a 42" diameter dome, a 21" radius. My dome height is 20-1/2", which was intentional. I might consider dropping the height of the dome down to maybe 19-1/2" or so. It'd be easy to do by building your IT with threaded rod, and depending on the thread pitch, giving it a twist or two after each course of brick to shorten the IT.

Insulation, I'm happy with the 4" under and the 4" over. I don't yet have an insulated door. I fired it yesterday, just now I checked the interior temp and it reads 527F, that's with nothing more than a couple of bricks stood up to partially block the opening. Not tight at all.

My vent arch is bout 3" wider than my dome arch, for a roughly 1-1/2" reveal around the dome arch opening. I do like the larger radius of the vent arch and how it gives a larger reveal on the dome arch. It'll make it easier to insert and remove the door when I get that built. The larger width of the vent arch also gives more lateral wiggle room when using a long handled tool to manipulate things in the oven.

I have already pulled my oven floor brick out of the oven once. So having the herringbone floor brick inside of the dome and completely independent of the dome sphere (the dome NOT built on top of the floor brick), that's a good detail.

I also like that I changed floor brick patterns, from herringbone inside the dome, to a running bond pattern under the vent arch. It creates a physical break in the brick patterns at the dome opening. I don't have any sort of insulation at that break, right now the brick from one pattern simply abut the brick from the other pattern. Yet there is still a significant drop in floor brick temp when cooking. That delta-T will increase when I undercut the abutting brick and fill that inverted "V" gap with a wedge of insulation.

I really like the technique I used to construct the chimney transition on top of the vent arch. Fast and easy the way I built it.

One thing I would do differently, and it has been mentioned in other threads, would be to cast a couple-inch high raised platform the same size as the floor insulation footprint on top of the hearth slab. I'd then RedGard (or equivalent) the top and sides of the raised platform, then build my dome on top of that. That'd be one more level of protection to minimize water intrusion into the floor insulation from the hearth slab.

On my build, I painted RedGard directly on the hearth slab and put my floor insulation right over the RedGard, then I painted the edges of the board insulation with RedGard, lapping the RedGard down on to the RedGard on the slab. It's sort of the same type of detail - but not quite.

That's about all I can think of at this time.

[mongota]

Mongo - good looking pizza...and I think all of us are in a constant quest for getting better at using our ovens and developing "perfect pizza" skills. Although, one of my neighbors pointed out, you really don't want to make the perfect pizza because then what would be the point of making pizza again since it would always be less than that perfect one... (Our comment at any food related party is now, "Wow, this is ALMOST perfect...you'll have to keep trying! ")

Thanks Mike.

The good news is that the learning curve to date has been steep. Each fire has been better than the one the day before. Each pie, the cooking technique has been better than the previous.

Dough handling, I definitely need to get better at that. Part of it is developing a work space and subsequent work flow for pie assembly. But if that's the biggest problem I have...it's a pretty good problem to have. Things could be worse!

[shanxk8]

Mongo, you mentioned in another thread about using thoroseal on your stucco and adding could to the last coat?

I have two questions as I'm at a similar stage. I have just finished my second stucco coat and plan to do one more.

#1 that did you use to seal your stucco where it meets the countertop? (My guess is outdoor silicon, but really not sure)

#2 how did you determine you could add color to the thoroseal? (I am using a similar product as I could not source that brand, it's called flex Crete)
i was thinking to seal the second layer, then put a final colored layer with the colour we want. Based on your comment I need to research more.

[mongota]

Mongo...I have two questions...

#1 that did you use to seal your stucco where it meets the countertop? (My guess is outdoor silicon, but really not sure)

#2 how did you determine you could add color to the thoroseal? (I am using a similar product as I could not source that brand, it's called flex Crete)
i was thinking to seal the second layer, then put a final colored layer with the colour we want. Based on your comment I need to research more.

Question #1, waterproofing...I didn't use a sealant where the stucco meets the slab. I used RedGard and Thoroseal.

- I painted the dome slab with RedGard, then placed the 4" thickness of board insulation on top of the RedGard, then painted RedGard on the edges of the board insulation, lapping it down on to the RedGard that was already on the slab. The goal there was to fully isolate the edges and bottom of the board insulation from any moisture within the slab.
- I then added 4" of blanket insulation over the dome and then covered the blanket insulation with stucco lathe. With the stucco lathe in place, and tapcon-ed to the dome slab, I added more RedGard to the bottom of the lathe, and also carried that down to seal to the RedGard that is on the dome slab.
- The stucco coats cover the lathe and thus cover the RedGard, and
- The Thoroseal covers the stucco and is lapped down on to the slab.

Photos may help?
1) RedGard on slab
2) Insulation, then more RedGard on edge of insulation lapped down on to RedGard on slab
3) 4" Blanket installed, RedGard still visible on slab
4) This shows the lathe secured to the slab with tapcons. I then cleaned it up and applied more RedGard on to the lathe, lapping it down on to the slab as well.
5) This shows the Thoroseal lapped down on to the slab, covering the RedGard.
6) A drawing

Question #2, coloring the Thoroseal. I called their tech department and asked about liquid and powdered additives for coloring. The only Thoroseal that the local store had in stock was white. I would have preferred gray. they had no problems with using either type of colorant, so I added a bit of carbon black to get rid of the stark white.