My WFO build is complete

[awfullynicefella]

Hello, I completed my oven this week, the building it’s located in took me about two weeks and the oven took a week from Dawn till dusk. I would guess in total it has cost around £1000 for the oven materials. I know it was a quick build but I really was on a deadline. Like most people I scoured the internet voraciously for information and used this forum a lot to gain more knowledge. I used it last night and it worked incredibly well and it was reading around 450 degrees. I thought I would share my photos. I opted for the Sand dome form which very few people seem to do but it made making the dome a days work and was pretty easy.

Photos here

share.icloud.com/photos/0BZoFoqDgfhVnKempyQVNIP_A

[woolf26]

Looks Great - love the idea of the wine holders, wish i had thought of that!

[awfullynicefella]

Thank you. If anyone is after some Large vermiculite boards I have Ended up somehow with about 8 of them, free to anyone willing to collect

[woodywun]

...where are you?

[woodywun]

I looked through the photos.  Very impressive!  Did you put anything over your sand dome before you started to build the dome over it?  They look like clay bricks going on?

[hughjamton]

Jun 4, 2020 23:21:00 GMT awfullynicefella said:

Thank you. If anyone is after some Large vermiculite boards I have Ended up somehow with about 8 of them, free to anyone willing to collect

hi,
Where abouts are you?

[awfullynicefella]

I am just outside Skegness, Lincolnshire. Call me on 07960629033 if you are wishing to collect the boards.
I put wet paper over the sand dome And laid the bricks on in a day.
The oven is just over a meter in diameter and it took around 12 bags of sand.
The bricks are traditional solid reds used locally in this area.

[hughjamton]

Jun 6, 2020 10:19:55 GMT awfullynicefella said:

I am just outside Skegness, Lincolnshire. Call me on 07960629033 if you are wishing to collect the boards.
I put wet paper over the sand dome And laid the bricks on in a day.
The oven is just over a meter in diameter and it took around 12 bags of sand.
The bricks are traditional solid reds used locally in this area.

Thanks but your a little too far for me, I'm in wet and windy Kent.

[woodywun]

Thanks for your reply.  Alas, Skeggy is too far from me here in Devon and I hope someone takes up your generous offer.

Bricks on in a day.  I like the sound of that!  I was thinking of using the 'indispensable tool' method and working over a number of days but you have convinced me of the benefit of your method.  My dome will have an internal diameter of about 650 mm.  I'm going to guess at about 8-10 bags of sand following your estimate.

The bricks that I have date from about 1920-1930 going on the house that they came from.  They weigh about 3.5Kg each so they are quite dense but they do have a frog (but no holes).  I will build with half bricks, butted up closely on the inner face. 

Did you pick up any more does and don'ts that I should bear in mind before I make my final decision?  I was intending to make the floor from upturned bricks lying on my insulated base.

Being on a budget, I've gone for clay house bricks and not the top-drawer option of fire bricks.  I can get 'solids' from a local reclamation yard at about £1.50 each.  With the floor, I would be up to about £140.

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

[awfullynicefella]

Woodywun, good to chat today, I think you will be fine with your chosen bricks. One thing I forgot to mention when building my sand dome I used two pieces of carboard cut in semi circles and interlocked in a cross as a template for shaping the sand dome. I left them in and pulled them out with the sand. I was a little apprehensive about using sand as opposed to a tool. I couldn’t find any online references to anyone doing it using bricks. Plenty of references to people doing it with clay. I honestly can’t understand why it is not more common. So easy and quick, I read that this method was not ideal as you can’t clean of the mortar inside. I just made sure to not put too much on that side of the brick when building. Any excess has stayed there and I only had a few bits drop in after the first hot burn and nothing since.

[oblertone]

I used solids for the dome and storage heater blocks for the floor, all insulated of course but it works well so far.