Tweet
Door jambs or ?pillars? at the oven opening are often constructed with vertical bricks, and straight mortar joints result where each ring butts up against the pillars.
But straight joints are a source of weakness, so I thought I'd stagger the joints on at least one course where the ring meets the pillar. To achieve this, I'm laying the door jamb bricks flat, rather than vertically, and in fact I had already decided on this method after following Balty Knowles oven build. I then had to devise a way to marry up tapered ring bricks to the flat pillar bricks.
First, after marking the point where the brick closest to the door jamb terminates, I cut the ?pillar brick? at the appropriate angle to butt up against it. To eliminate the largish triangular gap on the inside of the dome, I cut and mortared a triangle of the right size, and cut off a piece on the outside face of the pillar brick to maintain the dome thickness. See first pic ? this is the left ?pillar? and the ?opening? face is on the right hand side.
Now the fun part ? cutting the taper for the next course to sit on. This was done after I knew where that course was going to terminate on the pillar brick. It really wasn?t as daunting as I first thought. The second pic shows the result of my cutting endeavours.
The last pic shows the modified pillar brick, dry-fitted in position with neighbouring bricks. These three bricks now need to be mortared to finish that course, followed by the last couple of the course above.
Ah well, at least I?ve eliminated one course of straight joints ? it will be interesting to see if I can repeat the process in a couple of courses time. Watch this space!
Cheers, Paul.
But straight joints are a source of weakness, so I thought I'd stagger the joints on at least one course where the ring meets the pillar. To achieve this, I'm laying the door jamb bricks flat, rather than vertically, and in fact I had already decided on this method after following Balty Knowles oven build. I then had to devise a way to marry up tapered ring bricks to the flat pillar bricks.
First, after marking the point where the brick closest to the door jamb terminates, I cut the ?pillar brick? at the appropriate angle to butt up against it. To eliminate the largish triangular gap on the inside of the dome, I cut and mortared a triangle of the right size, and cut off a piece on the outside face of the pillar brick to maintain the dome thickness. See first pic ? this is the left ?pillar? and the ?opening? face is on the right hand side.
Now the fun part ? cutting the taper for the next course to sit on. This was done after I knew where that course was going to terminate on the pillar brick. It really wasn?t as daunting as I first thought. The second pic shows the result of my cutting endeavours.
The last pic shows the modified pillar brick, dry-fitted in position with neighbouring bricks. These three bricks now need to be mortared to finish that course, followed by the last couple of the course above.
Ah well, at least I?ve eliminated one course of straight joints ? it will be interesting to see if I can repeat the process in a couple of courses time. Watch this space!
Cheers, Paul.
Comment