Dreaming of oven for many years, now want to start

[golfguiedo]

Thx Russel -/ Not the look I am going for.
Do I have it right, this is what I need to do as illustrated? Making tapered bricks on every cut?

[UtahBeehiver]

You do not need to bevel the whole side of the brick (front to back) only the first inch or so, the top side of the ID of the bricks. JR did this, I did full bevels, front to back as well as tapers just to see how tight I could make the joints but not necessary, go JR;'s route.

[golfguiedo]

Well guys. I seemed to get in the groove to do a full taper front to back. Wasn't that hard once i got the hang of it. was able to get my entry keystones completed, and rows 4 and 5 mortared in today. I needed to get row 5 up to visualize the entrance cuts a bit better. I am pleased with the tight lines I got without V's Should have done this for row 3 too, but wasn't going to tear it down.

Tomorrow and Thursday I have to go back to real work from my vacation of making the oven. SO next major progress will be Fri-Sun. Hope to get row 6 cut at lunch time Wed-Thu and Friday compete the arch, get row 6 set and start on row 7 Saturday.

Here's the latest photos.

[JRPizza]

Very nice! Isn't it amazing how a person can go from "stuck" to "unstuck" once the lightbulb turns on

[golfguiedo]

Welll JR and Russel. Mde some progress after work today to get my Arch closed up and the course 6 installed and mortered in place. Should be a less of a hassle now that I have a smooth set of rows and dont need to worry further on the arch. Hope it stays up when I remove the forms! :>)

Clearly I caused my self some troubles to move the arch inward but now that it's done, I am pleased so far.

If you see anything concerning, speak up.

[UtahBeehiver]

You did a great job working around the arch being placed a little inward but you have cleared the arch with not dreaded droop so that is a milestone. Looks like you decided to do full tapers and bevels, that's great as well just time consuming.

[golfguiedo]

lots of good advise helped give the necessary guidance to know I was on the right track, thank you for that invaluable i nformation. so moment of truth was a few moments ago with the form removed, but wasn't really worried honestly as it's very sound structurally.

Any how the start of a long weekend of cutting. Lord willing and if my hands hold out for the blisters, may have a dome by end of Sunday. That's the hope! Still they eye is on the prize, 4th of July meal from the oven!!

so any advice on the size of bricks as I go up. I read in the guide that I should start to think about making them smaller and wondered if you found it was smart to go to 1/3 bricks at this point or should I just stick to 1/2 bricks still?

[JRPizza]

I went with progressively smaller bricks to keep the joints from aligning, although I still got a crack in the back of my oven and in one place the crack went right through a brick. I had read that you want your mortar to be weaker than your bricks but I guess the homebrew has some good holding power.
This is what I did for brick width. I made the bottom width of the bricks in a row the same as the top width of the bricks in the row below. Since I beveled the sides of my bricks every progressive row had narrower bricks than the row below, and I offset the bricks to keep the joints at the midpoint of a brick below as much as I could. As the dome built up and the brick width approached 1/4 brick I switched back to half bricks. Doing this you can make a perfectly staggered joint oven but other than aesthetics I don't think it really matters and I probably wasted some bricks in the process. You can minimize some of the waste if you save the remnants as you cut and using them where you want narrower bricks.

[golfguiedo]

Ended up going with 1/3 bricks after a most frustrating few hours struggling to get them cut right. 1/4 bricks seemed to be just too small. I was making full bevels (small front edge and larger rear) for courses 1-6 which kept small Morton seams, but I couldn’t get it right and the rear kept smashing together not allowing the right fits. So, I found that I needed to just make straight cuts for rectangular bricks with the bevels for the “inward V”. Took a very long time for me to get course 7 up yesterday. Then when I finally fit out, 1/2 of row 8 got laid around the time when dinner bell rang!

[golfguiedo]

Gentlemen - Saturday evening, was able to get most of the courses up to the Keystone. Continued using 1/3 bricks mainly and found I needed to bevel the bottoms to allow to not have a "V" underneath the brick.

My opening is a bit large so I will be trying a few things tomorrow and am contemplating (2) 1/2 bricks to fill the space. Not sure firebricks come 9" x9"x 4.5" or not.

in Any case, here's a few photos.

[golfguiedo]

Russel or JR:
Tomorrow (After figuring out the keystone, I will be starting to think about the entrance chamber. I was planning to place 9x4.5 on their side, with 2.5" heightmaking a radius (allowing a 1" reveal.) Any suggestions or comments as cutting a full brick on it's 4.5" axis is hard and time consuming on my saw. Any alternatives I could consider instead?

[UtahBeehiver]

Wow, your are a fast brick layer, as well as nice looking work. I am not sure I follow your question, draw a quick sketch and post. Are you going to install a thermal break on inner arch and vent arch. If you are look at the ":L" shape vent bricks that JR and Gulf did.

[golfguiedo]

I had not planned on a thermal break. I was planning to connect the entrance to the oven.
How can I judge what would be he effect if there was no special effort to separate the vent from the ovens?

[UtahBeehiver]

Opinions on thermal breaks vary on the effectiveness of arch and floor thermal breaks, how efficient, there is no white paper on the subject. I have both on my oven, is it better, can't say since I nothing to compare too. So it is up to you. but what I can say is good dome, floor, and a insulated door are your best bets and thermal breaks are just one more thing to consider. It just went hand in hand with what you were asking about for the vent chamber.

[JRPizza]

I put in thermal breaks as in the big scheme of things there was not that much more work. My floor break is just a gap that I let fill with ash. For my arch break I did cut some L shaped bricks (you can see in my thread) but did so for 2 reasons. First after deciding on a thermal break I wanted a horizontal surface to put in my rope gasket - partly because it made it much easier to retain it (it's pretty much just sitting there) and partly because I thought it lessened the chance of fibers falling onto my cooking surface and landing. The second reason I cut the L shaped bricks is I thought it made my arch more stable. A vent that is not tied into the dome is "free standing", so any additional brick width fore-aft can add to the lateral and torsional stability of the structure. The L shape gave me additional width without adding length to my vent, if that makes sense.