Tweet
My wife's been bugging me for years to build her a beehive dome, and got me the FB plans, so I launched into it. So far it's doing pretty well, I'm up to about the fifth course and it's looking good. Using Heat Stop 50 which seems to work really well (I wanted to add sand, but the bag said not to). No forms so far, but I did build a 1/4 round "jig" that hooks onto a piece of rebar that fits into a hole in the central brick that will eventually take a thermocouple. I found that for splitting lots of bricks in half for the dome a cheap hand pumped log splitter works great, not a super straight surface but neat enough for something that won't show and will be mortared over and then immersed in perlite (enclosed dome). I found mine in a junk pile and had to get a new jack for it, but you can get them at Harbor Freight or such for about $100. When you're done building the oven, you can use it to split your wood! Figured out another trick: if you want to hold a small piece of brick to do some fine cutting with a circular saw with a masonry blade, fill something like a cat litter pan with about four inches of wet sand and bed the piece of brick down into it and wail away.
Question: should I do the initial curing before I enclose the dome in the insulation? I've been leaving the dome covered at night (it's down in the upper 30s here at night) with a heater running inside, and there is a LOT of moisture coming out of this thing. Seems I'd like that to escape into the atmosphere and not into the insulation. Speaking of which, there is a place here in the Lehigh Valley (Bethlehem/Allentown area) called Pennsylvania Perlite that has all different grades, big bags, cheap, no silicone. 800 473 7548.
Mike Space
BTW, the gentleman with the camera tripod gave me a good laugh mentioning Whitworth fittings, since I've got a bunch of British cars. Figures we'd be the type building ancient technology like brick ovens.
Question: should I do the initial curing before I enclose the dome in the insulation? I've been leaving the dome covered at night (it's down in the upper 30s here at night) with a heater running inside, and there is a LOT of moisture coming out of this thing. Seems I'd like that to escape into the atmosphere and not into the insulation. Speaking of which, there is a place here in the Lehigh Valley (Bethlehem/Allentown area) called Pennsylvania Perlite that has all different grades, big bags, cheap, no silicone. 800 473 7548.
Mike Space
BTW, the gentleman with the camera tripod gave me a good laugh mentioning Whitworth fittings, since I've got a bunch of British cars. Figures we'd be the type building ancient technology like brick ovens.
Comment