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