Wood Fired Brick Oven

Summer of 2004 I began construction on a wood fired brick oven for cookouts in the backyard.  I didn't buy or use any books or mail order plans to build it, I just simply put the skills and knowledge I already had to use.  After years of designing and building refractory furnaces for melting glass this oven was no problem to construct. I decided to build a Dome or Beehive style oven because it seemed like it would be the hardest style to make. 

What is a wood fired brick oven? Basically its an old world style cooking oven. Thick layers of stone (hard brick) will trap and hold the heat created from the wood fire that burns inside. The stored radiant heat is then used to cook with. It makes the best tasting foods you can imagine, better than any conventional oven.  Burning the right types of woods inside the oven while cooking acts like a smoker infusing the most incredible flavors into the food.  You can use this type of oven to cook anything you would cook in a conventional oven as well as some things you cant. I built this one mainly for making pizzas. The best pizzas ever,.. and they cook in 3 minutes or less!

There aren't photos to show every step because I didn't want to give away any top secret furnace building techniques. 
That, and the fact that I was too lazy.

In this photo I am already about 3 weeks into the build. Most of the labor intensive grunt work is already finished. Here I have already dug, leveled and laid the foundation slab, built the base walls, built and poured the insulation slab, laid the flooring block, laid and mortared the base ring of the dome, built the mouth arch and started the rear flue. Inside floor area is 4ft across.

Side view. The first ring of angled brick has been cut and positioned on top and is ready to be mortared. This furnace has a lot of cuts. It took 2 and a half wet saw diamond blades for the entire project.

Same, from the front. 

First angled ring mortared and another stack on the flue.

Same, from above side. Note the inside base ring is recycled refractory brick I used from old glass furnaces. Heat rated for almost 4KdegreesF., massive overkill for this project. Like putting 18" slicks on a Bigwheel.

Fast forward another week. The remaining rings of angled brick have been stacked to connect and complete the dome. The Brick portion of the flue is finished and a ceramic lined woodstove chimney is joined and mounted to the inside of the brick flue. A 1 to 2 inch thick shell of refractory grade stone mortal is built up over the entire outer surface of the oven.

Now jump a few more weeks ahead. I've built up another 4 to 6 inches of refractory grade insulating stone over the entire outer surface of the oven on top of the previous layers. I then used heavy gauge wire mesh to shape out the lips, fins and tail. Then packed and spackled them with more of the insulating stone. The eyes are custom hand blown glass pieces I made at the shop.

Same from another view. Close to completion now. I still need to do some finishing work and some airbrushing to make it look sweet... but that would have to wait a little while.

It got a little too chilly for painting. You can see in the bottom front I laid in a brick arch where the wood storage area is.

Its now summer again and I have made more progress on the oven. I will have some current photos of it up soon.

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