40” Pompeii in Rhode Island

[NewEnglandNewb]

Thanks Russell, I will grab a longer hose for the pump and give that a try over the weekend.

i made my IT and started playing with it to lay out the oven floor. It is screwed to a piece of melamine covered MDF that is cut to be the same shape as a brick. It was the perfect thickness for the pivot to be level with the floor. The IT length is adjustable from a little over 20” to a little under 18”. I do plan on reducing the radius of the dome a little as I go up, with the goal of having an 18” ceiling height. I also cut a grove into the block the inner face of the brick rests against to hold a pencil even with that face. That made it easy to draw the circle on the floor and should come in handy laying out the inside face of the inner arch.

[NewEnglandNewb]

I set the pump for the wet saw up in a separate bucket like Russell suggested. This setup worked great! I got the floor cutout, then wrapped the edge with corrugated cardboard to keep a gap between the floor and the dome to allow them to expand/contract independently when heat cycling. I’m hoping to get the inner arch and a few dome courses laid out and cut tomorrow. One of the local building supply places has everything I need to make home brew, I will pick up those supplies this week.

[UtahBeehiver]

Are you going to do a tapered inner arch? It is well worth the effort and makes the dome/arch interface easier. It is one of the more difficult concepts to visualize but worth considering.

[NewEnglandNewb]

I am planning a tapered inner arch. It will look more like the second picture than the third as I’m not planning on it being circular. Having the vertical sides seems like it will give a little more room for pulling pots in and out of the oven and that style of arch will match the arches in the stand.

I grabbed some 1/8” plastic shims to help space the bricks out to simulate the mortar joints. Are 1/8” joints a reasonable target for home brew mortar?

[UtahBeehiver]

1/8" joints are a great target but you have some wiggle room to work with too. There is a tool called the Angleizer by General Tool that will help you set up the Ax arch and it use to have a program with it that spit our top and bottom dimesions of the wedge shape of the brick. I still have the files, not sure they still work but if you PM your email I will send them too you. The tapered arch whether Ax arch or full arch use the same concept as shown in the first pic. You start with the Top Dead Center brick (you need to use full size bricks in order to cut the taper) then work down each side "ONE" at a time, using the last brick to mark side near the previous brick then the IT to set the opposite side of the brick. You cannot cut all at once, since the angles change as you move down either side of the TDC.

[mongota]

Looking good!