top clay finished

I've completed 3 layers of clay at the top so thats about 80mm thick.

Next week I'll lay a nice smooth dome of vermiculite/cement to finish it off.

pizza oven front stage 3

A close up of the final result, looks great I think, and a shot of it with the buiffet/herb bar infront.

Can you believe it but today was a TOTAL fire ban !!!!

Any it was 37 degrees C , so it was to hot to get on the roof and cut a hole for the chimney.

pizza oven front stage 2

I used the mold from the inside of the oven for the final arch out front, i had to cut a little of the sides as i did the double brick supporting walls which made that arch a couple of cm's thinner.

Then just supported it with bricks.

i laid the 2 side bricks with mortar but after that I just mortared the back of the brick where it hits the chimney and then spilt/pushed mortar down the gaps as there wasn't any space, kind of like "pointing" the bricks, then i just pushed mortar in the fron joints and took the mold away after 1 hour.

The arch stayed up and i was able to fill in any gaps with a kind of rendering technique.

Pizza oven front arch - stage 1

So you can see here the progression of that horizontal support I put in, it probably has no real value but it doesn't hurt. I created the front arch walls with a slopping brick at the top to help reduce the gaps the bricks will have in them to create the arch. I left this for a couple of days to strenghten .

I also added a few more levels to the chimney, i will now reduce its width and take it through the roof, once through the roof I will place in a metal chimney pipe.

Here you can see the herb garden and the oven together, its going to be great to have an extra shelf to place pizzas on from in and out of the oven.

heres a close up, its just a brick rectangle with a hole in it, the base concrete slab also has a hole in it and the inside is cover with thick black plastic to stop moisture going out through the bricks.

That ugly front side mortar you see there will be hidden once I place the calapsable side wooden benches onto the bricks, calapsable so they don't take up space when not in use but that extra shelf space will be great come party time.

First pizza

Well the first pizza was a bit of a disaster, the base didn't cook and I think the reasons were : I built the fire to the right only so to keep the floor as clean as possible so those base bricks never got that intense heat to begin with and secondly I didn't pre-heat the oven for long enough ( i don't have a temp gauge yet) so it took 20mins for that pizza to be eadible.

funnily about an hour later would have ben the time to cook the pizza.

live and learn, i'll do more experiments to get it right, thats half the fun!

Terracotta front of pizza oven

FINALLY got the terracotta pavers i wanted for the front, these tiles have holes running through them thats why I cut the side ones at 45dg so i get flush ends

My front is now all the one level for smooth entry to the oven.

Now all i need do is create my front arch whihc the sides will sit ontop of the pavers so from the front you will not see any of the back of the oven

Second burn

A much more intense fire and for longer this time, once again movig it around inside to heat up all areas of bricks.

It really looks GREAT, this is what all the work is about, the smell of that fire, the warmth, and the future pizzas !!

still got the front to finish but that won't be long.

First burn

Well we finally lit a fire !!! yippee, only a small one but gee it looked great, and the good thing is the smoke did what it should and went up the chimney and not out the front of the oven.

I moved the fire all around the oven to season the mortars and i kept it going for 3 hours only

chimney going UP

SO the chimney is now making its way up, above it is some corrugated clear roofing which it has to go through.

I have a few options as to when i stop the bricks and then put in the round galvenised iron chimney pipe so i have decide to take the brick trhough the roof and then add the pipe, the main reason is the pipe might get hot and melt the roof but the bricks will be a better insulator. I then need to simply water proof the around the chimney. +++ it should look good.

I need a tall chimney as the neighbours garage is 2 storeys high because they are uphill from us, if i don't take the chimney up high the smoke may just end up coming back down onto us. yes smoke can travel down.

clay cracks

As i expected the clay cracked ( as i had done tests) but no big deal, before laying the next layer i poured some fine runny clay into the cracks.

one thing i haven't done yet and that is feel if any heat is getting out when i have the fire going.

Clay topper

So now what i will do is a few layers of clay, really only because i have LOADS of it from the excuvation of the site. I researched a millllllionnnn different way to do this, there were mixing it with sand and testing its elasticity/shrinkage, mixing it with cement, mixing it with vermiculite, grinding it down into a powder before adding water etc etc and in the end i came to this conclusion....

The clay is not in contact with flame, it isn't inside the oven so its not going to crack and fall into a pizza, its purely another layer of "something" to help keep the heat in SOOOOO, i decided to use the "African in the middle of nowhere" method....

which is.... wet it squeeze it and slap it on.

I'll be doing 3 layers letting each dry beofre adding the next and finally adding a vermiculite/cement layer that will create a smooth arch over the entire dome which we will render a colour.

you can see here i have not placed clay onto the side cement walls, the clay will be encased inside the ver/cerment which will help with weather proofing (even though it is under cover

more clay action next post

cleaning inside the pizza oven

If you know a jockey then have them come help clean the inside of the oven !! the door is @35cm sq thus @ 50cm diagonal and my shoulders are 54cm across, I have to jimmy up the ladder backwardsslide my arm in with 1 shoulder then pull my other arm in. Sounds easy !!! but I stretched a muscle and got a cramp whilst inside, i couldn't get out and thankfully it subsided but it wasn't pleasent.

The other thing is I have cleaned the inside as I have gone, not leaving it to the last minute so this last clean shown was only the drop and side bricks. Keep cleaning them bricks whilst the front area is open.

I suggest you "blind clean" the inside front, meaning just stick your arm in and scrub, then go inside and do the bits you can see, I ran a small table light into the oven so i could actually see.

All i used was a scourer and water and then a cloth to wipe the muck off. it really only took me 10 minutes to finish it off.

Herb garden / buffet bar

In this image you can see the top of the buffet/herb bar across from the pizza oven, it will make a great little spot to put it and bring out pizzas to. that bottom right hand side of the image is a hole full of dirt that goes straight down to the ground and we will be planting herbs in that area, the interior of which i have lined with heavy duty plastic that gardeners use behind retaining walls, you'll find it leftover on alot of building sites.

Won't it be great to just before you slid your pizza into the oven you pick some fresh basil, tyme, rosemary or sage? (yes i know you can't plant them all together but you get the concept !) the herbs is not my responsibility its the girls.

Side cement finished

Well you can see here its a real building site, most of those bricks you see are for the second part of the project...the smoker oven. you can see here the form work is removed and note the blue patch on the top of th eoven, thats where we are putting the clay.
The top view shows you the concrete surrounding the walls of the oven, i have leveled it off where the dome starts to curcve in, i'm going to place a layer of clay on that blue insulation leaving space at the sides to then do a final coat of vermiculite/cement over the top of the dome. I'm using the clay simply because I have alot of it from the original excuvation of the site and its good clay so why not use it !!

That clay will just add an extra depth of insulation to the top of the oven, and help to create a nice shape, the vermiculite/cement will then top it off and we will render the whole thing in some yet to be decided colour.

Heres a close up of the side, you can see here there are some hole which i will fill in with a cement mix, the problem happened when i started the form work and miss calculated the amount of cement needed for the job, it was a hot day and i had to drive out and get more gravel, by the time i got back the cement was almost set so there is layers, you can see, i the walls. I hope that snippet saves someone the hassle i had/have. should be fine though.

Another note is one i made in my last post about having your form work SOLID, as you will need to shove the concrete down to make sure you don't end up with gaps and holes once you take the form work away.

wool insulation

hen i added some wool insulating, i used foil backed wool out of 2 hot water heaters, I got it from a scrap metal yard as they don't care about the wool so it was FREEEEEEE, i then covered it in housing insulating foil which is CONSTANTLY disgarded at building sites so do NOT pay for it. then chicken wire which once again people through out constantly, i've added some reo on the sides and back just to be overly secure but thats optional.

heres a view from the top once the "form work" is around the oven, next week i will just pour concrete down the sides , i'll be adding some left over fondue but thats just becuase i want to use it up.

PLEASSEEEEEEE, make sure your form work is TOTALLY secure, make sure it can;t move top and bottom, "kick it" and if it moves then you should do something about it.

WOW, its really starting to look like i can cook something now. well actually i can but its best i have been told to be patient and season it gradually, kinda like a car, the better its run in the better it will work for you.

Chimney start

heres a top view-ish , you can see how the leveling off has create the start of the chimney and it all looks good and straight.

what you don;t see here is that the front side of the chimney is actuallt going to be suspended across that front wide gap and not the front arch.

NOTE: i've made a little mistake here so do not take this image as design as i have to cut a couple of bricks to get it all setup for the next step. detailed in a later post. but you get the idea.

creating drop to chimmey transition

I showed you a mock up image in the last post so here you can see it completed, basically I have made the angled drop back to a level area to build the chimney onto, at the back of the "mess" . you really need to keep this tidy as when you do the next stages you want ot make sure there is no gaps that air can gather in, i read this can cause explosions? with air heating up? anyway.....just fill it all in and keep it square and it should be easy to

heres the front view, you can see the supporting angle iron (refer to mock-up image in previous post) and I have secured the angle iron "downward" pressure by placing bricks in the chimney section infront.

you really need to make sure as you build your chimney up that the weight is being forced down into the correct direction.

heres a close up of that support, i had to shove alot of mortar into that jiont becuase i didn't cut the bricks myself, but you can see here how that works and it will be a great support for the chimney. the smoke will also be drawn backwards as it exits the oven and hopefully stay on the inward side of the chimney ensuring no smoke goes out the front area and THUS keeps that area clean.

Finishing the drop

Further to the last post you can see i have cut a brick to fit into that angle slot, 2 whole bricks will go infornt of it to complete the oven seal.


heres the mock up of what i intend to do, i feel it is important at this stage that you know where your chimney is going to go and HOW you expect to level off that angle. this is a great website with good images http://www.villagok.dk/brickoven/july2005/july2005.html , scroll down to the image of his "drop"


I happen to have picked up for free some already cut angle bricks so i am using them.




the inside after its all closed up (not cleaned) but you can see how that simple side arch with 2 bricks in fornt makes a good seal, the IMPORTANT thing for me has always been not to have areas that can hold ash and then eventually drop into your food, this design i think achieves that.

the front stage finished up to the stage of laying out the bricks to suppot the chimney which will run along the top of the drop.

just need to clean inside and i can start seasoning it ready for the first pizzas.

Oven Drop - extensive explaination

This is a longgggg post with heaps of images as i feel its needed, this was a difficult thing to work out, funnily it was only after I worked it out I started to find good info on it.

Well basically , at the front of your oven you want to drop the smoke down and thus it will want to go up again QUICKLY thus the "draw" from you chimney will help that and the assumption then is that you end up with a clean fron of oven as no smoke comes out the front ++++ that smoke "pocket" holds heat rather then letting it go straight away thus giving you oven a more effecient use of the wood. I think thats the concept?

so here are some images for you to look at what i did, there are millions of ways but you might get the basics.

here's the concept, you have your front bricks of the oven but you leave the roof short so you can place slanted bricks to create the "drop" at the oven door. allow for mortar depth.

you can see here i just cut the bricks with a angle grinder, i only have a few to cut. To work out the angle use pythagoras theorem, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem , you will need to use it in the "negative" spaces not the brick, meaning it is used to work out the cut-out piece not the end brick.

This is what it looked like before creating the drop, that small angled brick on either side is actually a 1/3rd of a brick, the reason is simply to use as much of the space i had available

I videod this and will put it on youtube asap, then insert the link here:

here's the pre-drop mortaring the bricks prep, i have 2 small arch supports on either side.

here i have put the first arch bricks in and started the drop angled bricks, using fondue.


a more front view for you.
I found the mortar dries REALLY quick so those arch bricks held themselves up within 10 minutes !!!

heres the 5 middle drop bricks, you can see i'll need to place some front bricks and the last left/right-arch brick in, these bricks will need to be cut to order.

The inside (not cleaned up) there are better shots coming later on in this blog as I close up the oven.

pizza oven rotisserie

I have a concept, we'll see how it goes but here is the image of the nut I placed in the back of the oven, that will allow me to slot in a rotisserie rod and given the oven is 75cm deep I could possible do 3-4 chickens at a time, I'll place a mount and motor outside the oven, I haven't worked out the total "logistics" of it but I WILL so stay tuned.



My thoughts are that once you have gained that HEAT needed for pizzas why waste it, so there could be a whole list of things you can cook at different times as the oven slowly cools down.

Fondue and Vermiculite Melbourne

here is the bag of fondue i am using, i got it from http://www.refractoryandceramic.com.au/

heres the vermiculite, the actually addresso f the manufacturer is below.