more dome photos

ok .. i really enjoyed this project so i'm going to follow it through to its completion .. now we're on site, at the 'new' jj hapgood store, established (i think) in 1827, in peru, vermont.  the entire store is currently being totally rebuilt by new owners.  above is the domed form from my previous post, set up and ready to go for pete to build their new 72" diameter wood fired pizza oven. click the photos to enlarge them..

 here's a view from above, showing the circular buttress wall with the angled top that the firebricks that make up the roof of the dome will rest against, and be supported by.  from an engineering standpoint, the forces of the weight of the dome are transferred to the side walls, which have to have enough mass to support that weight. see flying buttress ...

 anyway, it's a soldier course of vertical firebricks and a 6" thick curved concrete wall loaded with 3/4" rebar.

the front arched door, through which the form will be removed is complete and ready for the flue for the smoke to escape to be built just behind it.  you can see that arrangement in the photo above this one, and the smoke will wend its way over to the hole in the flue in the back corner, and on its way, possibly heat some hot water .. in the end, all this stuff, including the 2.5" thick soapstone hearth will be pretty much invisible, so i'm glad to know what kind of effort goes into one of these ovens.  for more info, see the previous post.  and, to contact pete to order your own brick oven, here's a link to his website, vermont brick ovens.

under the dome ...

well, we're working with peter moore, of vermont brick ovens again.  we made the forms for the one above and a couple of others, and now we're attempting to simplify the on site set up process. 

basically, we have to create a structure that supports the bricks until the mortar sets.  once that happens, the forms all have to come out the oven door so they can be reused on the next oven ... 

in the past, we made about 24 half domes, which then had to be connected with thin strips of wood to support the bricks .. more or less, not much fun.  this time we plan to make 8 ribs and 24 pieces that lay on top of them, like parts of a turtle shell.  click the photos to enlarge them.

we started with this drawing, and decided we could make the 'shell' pieces an eighth of the dome at a time. we had to add more ribs for the two lower sections

the plywood doesn't really want to conform to the dome shape, and each layer is made from 4 pieces of 1/8th inch bending poplar and one layer of 3/8ths wacky wood.  some kerfs were cut in some of the pieces to facilitate the bends and as you can see in the photo below, the dome shape is not bad.

we plan to sand the whole thing once al 24 sections are laid up, cut to size and fitted.

to get the wood to conform, we had to use many screws, which can all be removed once the glue sets.  we may or may not have to fair the curves with bondo, though i think we will get better with the laminates as we do more of them ...

in the end, the finished oven will look something like this one ...40 years of wood working, and i've never made a dome before .. kind of exciting and challenging for sure ... more pics coming as we progress.

a custom food dehydrator

one of the local bread bakeries had an oven collapse and called in peter moore masonry to build them a new one ... while they were in the design phase, one of the things that came up was all this 'free' hot air that would be floating around ... the owner wanted to try dehydrating along with baking so pete called in sam, who took up the challenge ... he installed the dehydrator today and, from the pictures, it looks like it will be pretty slick ... the view above is a head on shot of the bread oven with the dehydrator on the left side, shown in the photo below ...
click the pictures to enlarge them ...
the 'frescoed' (colored) plaster is a nice touch ... the installed dehydrator ... the niches are for electrical junction boxes, which i'm sure will get covers before the oven is fired up ....
sam used classic 'angle and sheet' construction to fabricate the main box ... there will be heated air coming in on the bottom rear left and it will go out the top in the upper right hand corner ... there will be stainless racks inside and a small fan to move the air ...
here's a front view before the doors were added. will made the quartersawn oak doors in the woodshop and sam and i modified some hinges to accommodate the stove gasket material that we added to make the doors more airtight. . the expected temperature of the box will be 160-180 degrees so the doors are faced with 24 gauge stainless steel on the inside.
sam added the decorative dampers above to help control the airflow as the fruit is drying ... for more on pete's ovens, see this previous post
a previous vermont brick oven project ...