Making A "dome" Out Of Brick

Captainsls

I'm in the process of designing a cooking oven, and I've settled on using a dome style oven (no corners ). I have only novice brickwork experience, mostly straight, plum, walls, and the occasional curved wall. My idea is to create the dome by forming the dome out of wet sand, and then laying my brickwork over the sand, parge the brick, remove sand, and point the bottom. In my head, this seems like the most forgiving approach? Does this seem like a good approach to the dome construction?
Thanks in advance!
Chris

masonking02

i have buillt mail box domes (arch) using flat sheetmetal formed into the shape of the dome (arch) needed and laid my brick around it once the head joints was set up i pulled the metal out and laid brick up under the arch to close the space below

Captainsls

I would think in this situation metal fab would be pretty difficult to create a circular dome, or at least out of my ability. There won’t be an arch, it will be a dome. The brick will run as stretchers over the sand, if you can picture that.

mdshunk

Seems like a pretty neat idea, anyhow. Surely one of the brick guys knows the textbook approach. The sand method, to me on the face, seems like you might want to mix in a bit of Portland to stiffen it up a bit so it's not moving around on you. I forget what the stuff is they mix in with the sand in the foundries for sand casting metal parts, but it really stiffens up the sand, but comes right out when you're done.

artisanstone

You can do it as you describe. It would be easier though, to use castable refractory material over the sand. With the firebrick, it's going to be awkward to build on a small radius. Btw, what is your planned span and radius? If it's more than a couple of feet, you should build a rough wooden centering and form your sand over this.

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CJKarl

I built a working bee hive oven years back. I just used fire brick. Laid them with the heads inward. This made the oven very thick and I was able to lay the brick without building the middle up with sand. Came out sweet. The woman was the food editor for Glamour magazine. She cooked bread and pizza in it all the time.

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