Greg's Pompeii 42" - San Diego

[geisen]

Re: Greg's Pompeii 42" - San Diego

After tracing the hearth onto the insulation boards to help act as a guide, I mixed up the fireclay (motar clay) and fine sand into a paste and applied it with a 1/4 in notch trowel. Once the hearth bricks were back in place, I cut my template down the middle so it would come out of the finished oven in two pieces; then screwed it all back together to act as a guide for the the soldier course.

[exceloven]

Re: Greg's Pompeii 42" - San Diego

Greg,
Impressive! I'm very jealous I didn't have the brick holding tool as a guide. That should be a new requirement for all builders. It will save a lot of frustration 3 or 4 courses up. Keep the pix coming. Maybe I can see it in person next time I'm down your way. I'm guessing your in eastlake.

Mark

[geisen]

Re: Greg's Pompeii 42" - San Diego

Mark
My hearth is always open, give me a ring if you want to come out and provide some sage advice (and free labor ). I find the more wine I mix with the mortar, the less I care about imperfections.

I think Jim's "indespensible tool" (jcg31) is genius. I haven't mixed my first batch of mortar yet, and I can already tell it is going to make this a no-brainer.....which, in my case, is perfect.

http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/f28/my-indispensible-tool-variation-fb-theme-2985.html

I suggested he contact a patent lawyer but i suppose the maket pool for WFO tools may not be that big.

Regards
Greg

[geisen]

Re: Greg's Pompeii 42" - San Diego

Cut the top of the soldier course at an angle to reduce the mortar used. Set up a little jig on the wet saw to keep the cuts the same.

Used a whole bag of mortar on the soldier course. How many bags did folks go through for the whole project?

[geisen]

Re: Greg's Pompeii 42" - San Diego

Made some good progress today. Cut all the bricks for the second course. Used a cool tool I saw on one of these threads called a "Angleizer". Picked it up at HD. It came with a software program to figure out the angle required for each brick in an arch or circle of a set diameter and brick size. The Angleizer itself is pictured below. Four pieces of Yellow flexible yet sturdy plastic with a ruler on each in metric and std. Screen shots of software also included. While i didn't get crazy with making sure all the cuts were exact, it made my starting point for guessing easier to find.

[geisen]

Re: Greg's Pompeii 42" - San Diego

With the basic measurements given by the "Angleizer" software, I worked out a table Jig for the wet saw and raised the brick slightly to make it a compound angle cut. worked out really well. Used 2 door/cabinet shims to give me the right angle cut and a flat piece of metal to get the compound angle.

[geisen]

Re: Greg's Pompeii 42" - San Diego

Very excited by the end results of a full 8hrs of work. Now that I got the basics figured out, I think my next courses will start going up quicker. Now if I could just stop having to go to work or spend time with family / freinds; I could really make some progress.

[geisen]

Re: Greg's Pompeii 42" - San Diego

what happened to all the pictures?

[Dino_Pizza]

Re: Greg's Pompeii 42" - San Diego

Hi Greg, I thought the same thing! Yesterday I assumed it was my office's anti-something on the computer and now at home, I've got the same thing on 2 browsers. No pictures in the attachments. What gives? By the way, nice oven progress (by your descriptions, not your pics).
Take care, Dino

[geisen]

Re: Greg's Pompeii 42" - San Diego

all old thumbnail pictures seem to be gone. I reloaded a couple OK. others new posts seem to be OK. Just anything that is more than a couple days old have been deleted.
???????

[geisen]

Re: Greg's Pompeii 42" - San Diego

James fixed the pictures.
Thank you, James.

[Dino_Pizza]

Re: Greg's Pompeii 42" - San Diego

Well Greg, it's obvious why the picture attachments were not there; Forno Bravo had to clear your last pic of the Corona Beer in middle of your oven floor with BATF and the Pizza Police. It was deemed inofensive for U.S. adults (and kids of any age in Europe) so they unblocked all the pics.
Maybe if I have a beer while building, my craftsmanship might imporve .
Just kidding but seriously, your brick cuts and measuring-jig thingy's look awesome. Very nice work,
-Dino

[smuth10]

Re: Greg's Pompeii 42" - San Diego

Greg,

Did you make your own "Jim's indespensible tool"?

[geisen]

Re: Greg's Pompeii 42" - San Diego

Dino
I don't know if the cuts get any better with more beer, but I do care less.

Scott,
Welding is not within my skill set or equipment.
I sent an email to Jim and he kindly offered to make me one for cost as long as I was willing to pass it along when finished. I already have someone in the cue, but depending on timing we might be able to work out a handoff. May and June are packed with things that are going to get in the way of my progress. I don 't know if i will be done until at least late July. Jim might also have enough parts to knock out a few more indespensible tools if you ask nice.

[geisen]

Re: Greg's Pompeii 42" - San Diego

After finishing the second row it seemed like a good time to build the inside arch to allow me to tie in subsequent rows. The "Angelizer" program and tool was built to make this easy. You simply type in the arch width and rise along with desired grout width and it tells you how long to make each cut. See photo. I then dry laid them to double check.

This was the first time I had to make some very complicated cuts with multiple faces, angles and even curves on the same brick. I thought about using several smaller bricks glued together, but decided I'd try the cuts and see how it came out.