Re: Mortar Choices
I just completed my dome last weekend. Used Heatstop for the whole thing. The best thing I liked about it was the tacky quick-set properties. I didn't use any forms to build my dome. Once two bricks were set in a course they would support themselves in place...vertically. The downside is that I used 2.5 40lb bags at $60 a bag.
The rest of the story is that I started with one of the premix refractory cements, forget the name at the moment. Was to thin for my liking and I found it difficult to work with...have nearly a full bucket sitting in the garage and not sure what to do with it.
The other panic attack I had was that my local distributer only had two bags of Heatstop and I polished that off just as I was at the final 3 courses....yeah the toughest ones. So I bought the fireclay, mortar, and sand and tried that approach. I'm sure it works great but after building with no forms up until that point I didn't want to stop what I was doing and start working on forms, and my fireclay mixture was not going to support those last few courses without a form. So I called my distributer and he luckily had found another bag...so the day was saved.
Summary: of the three I tried; Heatstop, Pre-Mix, and homemade the Heatstop was by far the easiest to work with.
-
Mortar Choices
Hi I have a question for the community. The last oven I built I used a combination of pre-mixed refractory mortar for the inside joints and then filled the outer larger joints of the bricks with a mix of sand, clay and portland cement as described in Allan Scott's Bread Builders book. The reason for this is because the pre-mixed stuff did not reccomend large joints and it was more expensive than the home made brew. So far 2+ years later no visible issues or damage has occurred to it. But as usual I always try to improve on things and after all it is a big exepense to build one and last thing I would want to see is it fail and crumble before my eyes.
Are some of you just using Heastop 50 dry mix and filling the entire gap? As you roll the top of the dome those outer edges are pretty big gaps.
Thx.
Leave a comment: