www.sausagemaking.org

Hi Mark,
I have just finished building a wood oven.
It was built from Rado Hands' plans at www.traditionaloven.com

other family members have now put in orders.. the next one I build will be the pompei oven from the forno bravo site.

any questions please feel free to ask..


here is a pic of the oven vault finished in standard size medium duty firebricks.




and one of the first pizza's cooking... (oven not quite hot enough)



cheers,
Mitch.

That is a thing of beauty, very nice work.

Dave

Wow! That's superb.

Phil

Hi Mitch.

That looks pretty good which is more than can be said of mine. I have got as far as laying my hands on a Stainless Steel chimney off a local factory roof as it was getting redone. Pretty poor I know but I am hoping to get on do the beast. Incidently the spark that works for us has built one and uses it regularly.

Cheers
M

I have been after making one of these ovens for a long time and finally took the bull by the horns and got on with it.

Finding some of the required cements such as Fondue was tricky!

Hopefully I will have it finished in the next few weeks!

Good to see you on the forum Mick.

If you have any photos you can post, we'd love to see how you're progressing.

Hi,

Not many photos but here we go,

Firstly the empty space I thought would be perfect as it is just outside my kitchen and I bake lots:


Base made out of reclaimed bricks which a builder friend of mine got, they do look much better I feel and it measures 1.5 Metres square
(The board is over the gate to stop the chickens running off!)



Couple of concrete lintels in there with a sandstone front in the gap

Then filled with lots of hardcore and 6 inches of 3/8 chips and cement etc



My lad props his bike there.

Got the vault on Sunday and had to get fondue cement to go under it mixed with vermiculite. More pics will follow if anyone is interested.

looks great so far. Nice choice of bricks.

are you using a pre-fab vault?
or are you going down the firebrick route?

Hi,

Pre fab vault, it will suit my needs/timescale better, got it from a place in Manchester who import from Italy.

I am now just waiting on the Fondue cement to arrive. It is very high heat tolerant and it gets mixed with Vermiculite to go under the oven base. Regular fire cement it seems is not good enough. I spoke with a local open fire place business.

Also need some rockwool fireblanket to wrap it before rendering.

I am determined to get it done though - I have been thinking of doing it for about 3 years! and so pulled my finger out and started, at least that way I will get a move on.

Glad you like the bricks.

Mick

I just used regular cement under mine, mixed with the vermiculite, but I also had a full 110mm of fire brick on top of that.

Are you going to use any insulating fiber board under your oven floor/base?

I'm assuming that the oven vault comes with some kind of oven floor or cooking surface?

The vault itself has the floor, mouth etc and so that is going directly on top of this cement.

The whole thing is refactory material and this cement also has a high aluminium oxide content for the heat.

What ratio of vermiculite to cement did you use?

4 vermiculite to 1 portland cement.

for the insulation on the vault ceiling - I used 5:1

when you mix your first batch, just tip the water in gently...
It kinda like adding milk to your morning cereal.

if you just dump the water in, it will fly out of the wheel barrow and go everywhere!!!

How's it going Mick?

Got you vermicrete poured yet?

I have now got the vermiculite and fondue cement, the rockwool fireblanket is due tomorrow and so hopefully more progress will be made very soon.

I am also boarding out my loft (300Sq Ft) but as this is an old house the loft has many 'imaginative' pieces of carpentry holding various beams and joist together, it is presently eating up alot of my time as I am cutting by hand due to my circular saw going pop!.

I should get some more done on the oven in the next few days hopefully and I shall get pics of progress up ASAP

Managed to scrounge a steel pipe with a cowel fitted for the chimney though

Tomorrow could be fun! Finally got all things co-ordinated to arrive and away we go. Hoping to get it pretty close to finished tomorrow!

Fingers crossed