My truck with one of two loads of firebricks I bought on a ski trip two weeks ago. The materials come from a Olsen 36 that had been disassembled. I haven't had time yet to survey the lot but the price was right. The bricks are all insulating firebrick so I need to keep the hunt on for high alumina hard bricks. There is a wood burning kiln in my future...
This is random ...and related.
I had lunch with a friend in Portland this week at Flatbread pizza Co. http://www.flatbreadcompany.com/
They serve wood fired pizza, salad...oh, and beer. It's pretty much the trinity.
Our server invited us to stay and help build their new pizza oven, it was a community event. The current oven they use was built in 2000, how could I resist participating? The armature was already in place on a stone and sand base. Plastic bins like the one below were out on tables and a mix of sand and clay and cement and ash was delivered to kids and adults to mix with water and straw, to kneed and pound and wedge into bricks as stiff as our strength would allow.
Looking into the arch the fire is tended in the center of the oven while the pizzas cook on the soapstone sides. all of the wood formwork will be burned off with the first firing of the oven.
One kid getting some elbow into it...
I was busy making bricks and didn't get to pictures before most of the formwork was covered and smoothed together...chef d'ouvre Mark
The fire breaths and exhausts by way of the arch a the front of the oven...there is no other chimney so the oven will have a massive vent hood placed over it and will run continuously to evacuate combustion gasses. Though large, the hood in the picture is not the final hood.
The oven will be allowed to dry for 3 months before a fire is lit inside.
