East side finishedJune 1st, 2008
This project is essentially finished now. Who knows what the next thing might turn out to be?
From inside the bottle house
Closer view of front
North side of finished oven
Finishing the east wall
East wall ready for grouting
North wall ready for grout
By splitting the thick pieces I can make patterns with the matching slices. Here you can see the plan for the east wall, where the sun rises. The red is a 6-inch Mexican terra cotta tile left over from the hot-tub room floor project
This wall is about half done
Closer view of the east wall before grouting
A little dark, but the base is part of an old pea-vining machine from town. It's been here and there around our property for 30 years. Now it has a purpose again
May 23rd, 2008. This is some of the slate I picked up in Monson for this project. You'll notice some thick slabs and some thin pieces. The thin ones are what's left after I split the thick ones.
This is the front of the oven with the puzzle pieces adhered. When I finish all four walls I'll go back and grout it all in
This view is from the garage roof. Look closely and maybe you can see the clay tile supports that now hold up the new tiled shelf in front of the oven.
A new bench/table has been installed
We'll see who sits on it and who sits stuff on it. Either way is just fine with us
Leftover tiles from the hot tub room will serve as a work surface here. I dropped them in as the concrete set up to save a step tomorrow in cementing them in. I'll be able to grout later today or first thing in the morning and be ready for a crowd late in the afternoon
After a nearly intolerably snowy winter ( like a real, old Maine winter), spring exploded on the scene this week, culminating in a gorgeous Sunday afternoon in the 60s with just a light breeze swaying the maple trees with their plump buds. We lined up the lawn chairs facing the garden and several pizza lovers sat contentedly watching the daffodils slowly opening in the sunshine as the oven heated up. We made eight pizzas using a spinach infused multi-grain crust that people seemed to enjoy. Bartlett wines and good conversation, made even more interesting by an international guest list, rounded out the evening as we ended the party with Mike's brownies and homemade triple-chocolate and coffee ice cream. Naturally the coffee for the ice cream was Carrabassett's Einstein blend
I've begun laying a stone patio as an entry to the bottle house/PizzAmore
It's time to continue the project now that spring has arrived
I decided that the landing for stuff going in and out of the oven was too small, so here I've built a form to enlarge it to 18 inches deep
The concrete has been poured
Matt, in his "Ski Patrol & Apprentice Turner" hat, tends a pie in the oven while Doug assembles another one
Grampy Mike tries to entice Bryan with some pizza
And we also use it for regular grilling using the Tuscan-style grill shown below. I don't think there's anything that cannot be cooked in this oven. Still working up the courage fo try baking my bread in it. I'll no doubt get to that as the season progresses. Drop back to see images of the results.
A nice antique oven door I'm adapting to my oven now. The temperature
gauge goes to 600 degrees F. What a deal at $35.00!!!Try finding one of
these at your local Wally-World or Home Despot...(yes-I spelled it this
way on purpose)
The first door I looked at when I went to the stove
place was this one. It has a little door in the big door so we'll be
able to look in at the fire without opening the door all the way up. This
will be good when we're roasting meats and baking bread
Doug builds, Tim slices in the background, and Ethan samples a pie
A simple shaft collar on a bolt serves as a wheel to roll the grill in and out of the oven. Wheels are only on the rear as we lift the front using the handle to move it in and out
The augur I used for the handle came from Marian's home farm and was saved from the dump years ago when the farm was sold. Every now and then one of these treasures ends up being used in the house for some useful purpose - often not the one it was initially intended for
We now have 3 semi-matching pizza peels made from recycled and leftover
wood pieces. The mahogany and maple peels not only look nice but they work
well too. 14", 10" and 7", just in case the 3 bears come to
dinner
Knee top and a maple stump as the support of the tabletop
A roll-in/out Tuscan-stylegrill allows us to also cook steaks, burgers and fish in the oven
Side view showing the recycled wood augur as a handle
French fries bake in a cast iron skillet
Our first dinner from the new oven! Fries, tuna steak and peas from the
garden. (Ok, I admit the tuna wasn't from our garden). Yes - it tasted mighty good
Knee table for lounging while waiting for pizza to be prepared
A half hour into the first burn
An hour after the fire is lit you can see the ceiling of the oven turning
white. When the entire ceiling is white the oven is at 1000 degrees and is
ready to cook pizzas. In this image you can also see the fire exiting into
the flue in the front of the oven
Here's the oven all clad in cement board. It will likely remain this way
until the spring of 2008, when I'll have decided on the outer finish
material
The rear of the oven with insulation
I've heard the an 'upside down fire' really works well for getting the fire
going. Large logs are put on the bottom and smaller ones added to the pile,
with paper in the center
When the paper is lit the fire quickly catches and moves down to the
larger pieces
8" of rock wool (Also known as mineral wool) will keep the heat in
the oven instead of allowing it to cool to the air
Front view of insulation
Here you can see the cement board that covers the insulation
A view of the steel bracing from the front of the oven. The steel won't be
visible once the front arch opening is established. That may mean in the
spring. We'll see how things go this week. What you see from here to the
bottom of this page represents a week's work
I've figured out the roof and containment of the insulation. The lower
part is wood. the upper part steel studding to as be fireproof. I've somehow
managed to size it so that 3'x5' sheets of cement board will fit nicely to
make a watertight outer covering for the winter. It will also allow for a
simple tiling job on the outside if I decide not to use fieldstone. The
oven roof slips just under the eaves of the bottle house so the water
falling from the bottle house roof should keep right on going down
the oven roof without a deluge in our laps as we cook. hopefully anyhow
All the steel supports are now in
A closer look
With the Spalding Enterprises logo right side up
I decided to add some structural steel support for the lateral forces that
the ceiling arch might produce. Probably unneeded, but... 
The handle and center section of the peel are made from old African
Mahogany, saved when the Masonic Hall in Tewksbury, Massachusetts was torn
down years ago. I keep finding small pieces of it and using them in unique
ways. I forgot to rotate the image so you may have to tip your head to see
it. Ill probably include another shot later and in the right direction
This just shows that the glue has squeezed out nicely between the sections
of wood, indicating a good joint. After it dries I'll take it down to the
proper thickness, then shape and sharpen the edge.
A couple of hours of shaping and sanding; a coat or 3 of mineral oil and
the peel is ready for action. Here it leans on another important kind of
heating device at the house
The
oven can be used any time now. 1 week after deciding to do this we have a
useable cooking tool. Naturally it'll be a long time before the outer walls are finished. So long as the weather is the way it has been
this month I'm sure I'll at least begin that part of the project. It'll be
nice to have an idea of what it will look like when done. I'll also do
something about a temporary roof so the oven can be insulated before
winter sets in. Insulation helps retain the heat so it can be used to cook
for longer than when the fire is actively being fed
Blue
tarp is now down, chimney installed and the oven is out in the open.
I'll start a small fire tomorrow to begin curing. Next weekend we'll be
cooking in it
A few scraps of framing wood (mahogany and bird's eye maple) and we'll
soon have a nice wooden peel to place pizzas and stuff into the oven.
Here
you can see the cast flue run from above the oven. It's also a good view
of the top of the oven arch
This
view from the inside of the oven is of the exit hole for the fire in the
arch top. The exit hole is in the front part of the oven, connected to the
horizontal flue run, and the chimney is set up on top of the arched ceiling
at the rear of the oven, thus getting the smoke away from the front entry
of the oven. By building the fire in the rear of the oven and having the
smoke and fire exit at the front, the heat is better absorbed by all the
mass of the firebrick and refractory. The better heat retention, the more efficient
the oven when cooking whatever we decide to cook
Doug
scrubs excess mortar from the back wall after installing the firebrick
back wall of the oven
A
secondary arch now reduces the opening to the oven to contain the smoke
and heat. A further reduction occurs when the facing of the oven goes on - in this
case in the spring of 2008, unless the weather holds long enough for me to
get stone laid, but that's highly-doubtful on October 19th. Oh, look-Bill is
helping out again. We used a strap clamp to hold this arch in place
because I forgot the stack of bricks to hold the skew on this arch. Now
I'll have to install that after the fact - much harder then - drat!
I used a half section of 12" "sono-tube" as the inner part
of the flue form. It's set up like a horizontal periscope. One end looks
down into the oven and the other end looks up into what will become the
chimney
Another view. the box portion is the outer shell of the form and will come
off in a day or so, depending on time constraints more than the time
needed for the castable refractory to cure. The inside parts of the form
burn out in the initial firings of the oven. I used 4 50# bags of "Noxcrete"
castable
for this poured flue run
Bill
adjusts a few bricks before we lower the arch support. These are #1-A arch
firebrick. Note the short blocks under the legs of the arch form. After
the arch bricks are mortared in these blocks are knocked out, allowing the
brick arch to snug up using gravity
After
mortaring each arch run we immediately remove the arch form to allow the
arch to drop into its natural form. Usually this works fine, with a
minimum of adjustment. Should bricks need moving, use a rubber mallet so
as not to damage the brick surfaces. We employed angle iron and long
clamps to hold everything together while the mortar cured. 
We
needed to snug the arch runs to the previous ones. a long clamp and a bit
of persuasion made it easy to do. That's not blue sky through the flue
hole-it's blue tarp because it started raining early on 
Perhaps
the best thing to do on a project that might take a few days is to begin
by building an enclosure to keep the weather off. I was glad I did this
early this day because before long we had a steady rain that might have
made it both difficult and unpleasant to work. The temperature was fine
though
This
shows our form for the main vault arch, and a note reminding both us and
you to always remember that you'll want the smoke to exit the vaulted
ceiling somewhere. By cutting 3 bricks in half and using the 3 half bricks
in the top 3 rows of the front 2 arch runs you provide such a place for
the smoke. Later images will show how this interfaces with the chimney,
which will be in the rear of the vaulted arch. This also shows the 'skew'
bricks on top of the side walls. The ceiling rests against those and on top
of the walls. On a 36"x36" interior oven the skew is simply a 45
degree slice off a regular firebrick
Bill
helps out...
We discovered that by using a small floor jack and a short 2x6 under the arch form we were able to gently lower the form, rather than just yank out the shims and drop it. That way we also had the option to raise it back up if we needed to make adjustments
A
deer came to visit in the rain this morning
This
was how I chose to cut the firebricks in half, where i needed those
This
is actually just a little too much Super 3000 for adhering the bricks
together. Unless you have an erose surface, all you need is enough to just
cover the brick. That way they fit better all along the way
Getting
dark out early nowadays. Perhaps you can see the cantilevered shelf
towards what will be the front of the oven - shown to the right in this
shot. 
A
view from inside the Teahouse, of what will be the wood storage
compartment. The shingles under the form supports will be pulled out, thus
allowing for the plywood forming the slab floor to be removed easily, I
hope. I left the face of the base open to allow easier access to this
area. 
The
floor and lower tier of the walls are laid out dry for fitting purposes.
I've decided to use a product called "Insblock 19" as a way to
isolate and insulate the floor of the oven from the cement slab supporting
it. This product, as I'm using it, comes 1"x12"x36" so 3
panels costing a total of $22.50 seemed like a good investment. It feels
soft, but rigid, so it makes up for any unevenness in the cement surface.
It will change the overall height of the sidewalls so I'll have to decide
how high to make those before beginning the arched ceiling. 
The
block base is complete now, and with the mixer up in the Kubota, this pour
will be as easy as the base slab was
Another
view of the pour
The
pour completed
You
may notice that the bottle wall seems to be getting shorter now
The
slab is done now
And
the 4th bottle wall is out. Later I'll decide what to do with that wall as
the oven goes up
Mixing
concrete
Spreading
the goo
Pouring
Around
2:30 this afternoon (October 13th, 2007) we decided we wanted a pizza
oven, so we hooked up the trailer and wandered off to get some supplies.
By dinnertime we had the big burning bush transplanted out of the way and
the lower slab form in and leveled
Here's
another view showing the slab form with rebar awaiting concrete, which we
plan to pour in the morning
The
bush has been moved to the west wall of the garden gate. Hopefully it'll
survive the move. It's been here a long time. Shame to lose it now, but
good food is more important than bushes