Build a wood stove yourself
It is the most natural and oldest way of baking with fire on a stone. Bread and pizza then taste particularly good. This traditional way of baking in a wood oven is - despite all the technology - unsurpassed to this day. Therefore, fulfill your dream of your own wood stove in the garden and build it yourself. If you have some manual dexterity, it can be done very quickly.
What you need:
- 1/2 ton of sand
- 1/4 ton of clay
- Roofing felt as a moisture barrier
- A bag of cement for the small foundation (or large hewn field stones)
- 220 bricks for base / baking surface (or field stones)
- 80 firebricks for your vaulted oven (or heavy bricks)
- flexible press board or min. three vault gauges
- 3 to 4 sacks of straw or chopped straw
- For the roof:
- 40 m square timber (10x10 or 12x12)
- 18 roof battens, each 2 meters
- 4 verge boards - 25x8x150
- 4 metal feet for the stand
- 200 beaver tail roof tiles (or fewer other roof tiles)
- 8 ridge tiles
- Nails and screws
How to make a wood stove
- The actual stove body itself consists of a clay mixture and is simply heated with wood. This gives the pizzas and pieces of bread their unique and rustic taste thanks to their distinctive and typical roasted aromas. Your friends will be amazed. The way this wood stove works is very simple and has been built this way for centuries. In Italy you can often find models of this wood oven.
- You should build your oven yourself in spring or summer so that the base and oven have enough time to dry out. You can also use it in summer.
- At the foundation and base, it should be noted that it is usually sufficient to erect the structure on field stones embedded in the sand. But you can also make a foundation from a 10 cm thick concrete slab.
And here are the exact instructions for building it yourself
- Excavate the earth until you have found a solid base of clay, sand or rock. Then fill up the hole with sand. Here you can bring in field stones or then pour a concrete slab. You can continue working after 24 hours.
Use two strips of roofing felt as a moisture barrier. You then continue to wall on that.
The base is made with clay mortar or with lime or lime-cement mortar. When the oven is through a roof is protected, then clay mortar is sufficient.
Lime and cement are unfortunately not temperature-resistant and not suitable.
Now place two rows of stones measuring 24 cm at the edges of the foundation. Then place a curved hard fiber board between the two rows of stones as a vault template.
Brick up the vault from both sides at the same time. Shape the curve of the vault by making the joints wide on the outside and narrow on the inside. When both sides have been bricked up almost to the middle, then the keystone comes. You should fit this exactly, it holds the whole vault.
Now you brick the side walls up to the vault. Then top this off with a layer or two. Fill the remaining cavity in the base with sand. Lay the upper plinth surface with smooth bricks or firebrick panels. These then form the baking surface and are laid in the sand bed because of the expansion in the heat.
Now you wall up the vault with fireclay bricks, which store the heat optimally. Start with two outer rows and set the hardboard as a insulation between. Now continue working as you did with the vault of the base, namely until the arch is closed with the keystones.
Use straw and clay mud for insulation. Knead both together, throw the mixture in the oven and then smooth everything with your hands.
The door can be made of sheet metal or wood exist. The stove should be protected from rain and slowly heated to dryness. Good luck building your own wood stove.
Already the first people baked bread on a stone in a fireplace. Even …
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