30"-36" pizza oven, smoker and grill. Essex/East London

[nilly71]

Aug 7, 2020 14:13:21 GMT oblertone said:

Hi Neil, good progress given your stated limitations; just one point though, if you’ve got a bad back already don’t make it worse by placing the oven floor too low because that will cause you to stoop. The cooking surface should be at the elbow height of the main user.

Thanks for the advise, the pictures make it look low, it's actually 40" to the template on top of the thermolite blocks.

The cooking height will be 43" which is roughly elbow height for me. I can raise the floor with more thermolite blocks.
Do you think this will be required?

[mikeb21]

Looks great wish I had planned a bigger build originally.

Good luck with the build, take your time and I'm sure if will be fantastic.

[nilly71]

Aug 8, 2020 10:04:38 GMT mikeb21 said:

Looks great wish I had planned a bigger build originally.

Good luck with the build, take your time and I'm sure if will be fantastic.

Thanks.

[nilly71]

Start of the oven encloser and Thermolite blocks cut in half lengthways to give 4.5' of insulation.


Made a IT with bits laying around. Unfortunately it doesn't work perfectly as may cooking floor wasn't perfectly circular when I started.





The nail was for the first row to point to the centre of the brick.


Full brick cut in to 3 to give first row of 6"*4"*3"




Bricks not perfect, mainly down to my angle grinding skill(not). I get 6 bricks(4"*3"*3") out of every full brick.


Starting to really take shape now.



Just as well I didn't build the grill first, it makes an ideal workstation.


Starting to see it from my kitchen window (excuse the mess, I have a few projects on the go)

[frontwheel]

HI,

That looks decent!! I am planning on something similar .. I think! Would love to know how you are going to finish the smoker too. I assume this will be fired from the chiminea?

Are you just going to pour loose vermiculite or perlite between the dome and the blocks? looks like it would be too tight to wrap a blanket?

[nilly71]

Aug 20, 2020 9:52:30 GMT frontwheel said:

HI,

That looks decent!! I am planning on something similar .. I think! Would love to know how you are going to finish the smoker too. I assume this will be fired from the chiminea?

Are you just going to pour loose vermiculite or perlite between the dome and the blocks? looks like it would be too tight to wrap a blanket?

There is about a 1"-2" gap to the back and sides, so should be enough room for blankets. The blocks will also act as insulation. Yes, loose vermiculite or perlite will then be used to completely cover it once I finish off the blocks. I'll probably use plastic milk bottles, glass bottles or broken blocks in the large void areas to save on vermiculite etc.
Yes, the chimnea can be used for cooking above I.e. wok or pans. I haven't completely thought out the smoker but will probably use two removable sheets of steel to make the enclosure.

When are you starting yours?

Neil

[frontwheel]

Planning on starting asap, I am currently furloughed, have a few materials knocking around so figure I might as well finally take the plunge!!

[nilly71]

Aug 21, 2020 7:46:02 GMT frontwheel said:

Planning on starting asap, I am currently furloughed, have a few materials knocking around so figure I might as well finally take the plunge!!

Good luck.

[downunderdave]

Aug 20, 2020 18:12:42 GMT nilly71 said:

Aug 20, 2020 9:52:30 GMT frontwheel said:

HI,

That looks decent!! I am planning on something similar .. I think! Would love to know how you are going to finish the smoker too. I assume this will be fired from the chiminea?

Are you just going to pour loose vermiculite or perlite between the dome and the blocks? looks like it would be too tight to wrap a blanket?

There is about a 1"-2" gap to the back and sides, so should be enough room for blankets. The blocks will also act as insulation. Yes, loose vermiculite or perlite will then be used to completely cover it once I finish off the blocks. I'll probably use plastic milk bottles, glass bottles or broken blocks in the large void areas to save on vermiculite etc.
Yes, the chimnea can be used for cooking above I.e. wok or pans. I haven't completely thought out the smoker but will probably use two removable sheets of steel to make the enclosure.

When are you starting yours?

Neil

All good info. Only thing to add is that virtually any powdered clay is good, but avoid Bentonite as the extremely small clay particles lead to even more shrinkage than you want. “Fire clay” is a funny term. In the masonry industry it simply means cheap powdered clay, sometimes a bit grainy. In the refractory and ceramic industries it means a powdered clay capable of resisting very high (+1200C) temps. As our firing range is nowhere near that high it’s a waste of money. If you can’t access bricklayers clay, Ball clay from a ceramics supplier is probably your next best bet.

[nilly71]

downunderdave
The fire clay was from Kilnlinings, i have no idea what type it is.

[nilly71]

I can't wait for to be over and clean up my deck.
The bricks are taking forever to cut but at least I can do it in all weather's.

First they need cutting in to three, then into two and finally cut at angles. This gives me six bricks out of one 12" brick.
My cutting isn't great so need smoothing too.

[frontwheel]

I read a thread somewhere about how to reduce the number of cuts you do, basically, if you flip your "second brick" from that picture you uploaded, it means that you when you cut your first, you will also cut the angle for your second.

Do you understand what I mean?

If you imagine a "V" is your brick, you currently are doing VV whereas you should do VA (used an A as I do not know how to do an upside down capital V!) and you will only need to do 3 cuts instead of 5.

[nilly71]

Aug 26, 2020 8:02:14 GMT frontwheel said:

I read a thread somewhere about how to reduce the number of cuts you do, basically, if you flip your "second brick" from that picture you uploaded, it means that you when you cut your first, you will also cut the angle for your second.

Do you understand what I mean?

If you imagine a "V" is your brick, you currently are doing VV whereas you should do VA (used an A as I do not know how to do an upside down capital V!) and you will only need to do 3 cuts instead of 5.

Thanks, Makes perfect sense. I'll give that a try for the next lot i cut.

[nilly71]

Inner arch completed and removed the formwork straight away. Used up a lot of off cuts today.
Brickwork not perfect but building as cheap as possible, so bricks not all exactly the same size.

[nilly71]

Can't get much done due to bad back and restricted room to move, not perfect but I'm happy with it so far and really taking shape



Each inner arch brick was cut and some had 5 different angle's I'm happy with the result.



Circle is a bit wonky