There was a pretty long wood fired oven hiatus during the winter, mostly because the weather was too cold to apply the mortar.  Throw in a handful of other projects and it led to a delay of many months.

I finally got back to it recently, and am getting close to being finished.  My first session back I set the soldier course and the first row of bricks above that, and just about every weekend I would do another couple rows or one of the three arches.  Three weeks ago I finally set the keystone, which was a banner event.

Last weekend I finished the forms and cast the oven vent using castable refractory - a very high heat tolerant version of cement.  It has a very dry and crumbly consistency, especially if you are used to using concrete.  I opted for this route as I was pretty sick of cutting bricks, and wanted the inside of the vent to draw really well so there wouldn’t be smoke out of the front of the oven.

I’m in the process of curing the oven now to drive out all of the moisture.  I imagine it will take a little over a week to complete, I’ll slowly ramp up the temperature a bit at a time until I can get close to the right temperature for making wood fired pizza in the oven.  Somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 degrees F.