I'm in the process of building a wood fired oven within a dry-stone structure. I've been at this at least since September 2010, when I started brainstorming. Since I started so long ago, I have already come quite far, and am currently working on the oven itself. You may notice that I'm not a professional mason in the sense that I don't make my money doing this. I'm actually an attorney, but I take stone work very seriously. I hope no one will hold that against me!
That said, I started out doing dry stone masonry in 2008. I've done quite a few free standing walls and retaining walls, including some corners, steps, an arch, etc... However my wife wasn't very impressed, considering the time I was spending outside. So I set off to build a brick oven housed in a dry stone structure, meaning there would be no mortar to set the stones in. I realized that in order to do this, I would invariably have to find a gigantic capstone to cap everything together at the end, or the oven would get wet and I wouldn't get all the stones tied together properly. So I went in search of a stone that might work, so that I could design an oven and structure underneath it. I found one on a creek bank which was already almost rectangular. After I split a section off, it was 6'x4'x9" thick, and more importantly, it was accessible by the creek in only 2 feet of water, meaning I could drive a tractor up the creek to get it. So that's what I did first. I built a sled to lay the rock on, went down to the creek and jacked it up and slid the sled underneath and towed it out of there. Here is an album of the pictures: http://imgur.com/a/bsS2O
Here are two pics of the stone, for those who don't wish to visit an outside site.
I may be a bit slow on updating, but that's only because I'll be uploading and arranging pics as I go. The next post will be about how I chose a spot in the yard and dug and set the foundation.
That said, I started out doing dry stone masonry in 2008. I've done quite a few free standing walls and retaining walls, including some corners, steps, an arch, etc... However my wife wasn't very impressed, considering the time I was spending outside. So I set off to build a brick oven housed in a dry stone structure, meaning there would be no mortar to set the stones in. I realized that in order to do this, I would invariably have to find a gigantic capstone to cap everything together at the end, or the oven would get wet and I wouldn't get all the stones tied together properly. So I went in search of a stone that might work, so that I could design an oven and structure underneath it. I found one on a creek bank which was already almost rectangular. After I split a section off, it was 6'x4'x9" thick, and more importantly, it was accessible by the creek in only 2 feet of water, meaning I could drive a tractor up the creek to get it. So that's what I did first. I built a sled to lay the rock on, went down to the creek and jacked it up and slid the sled underneath and towed it out of there. Here is an album of the pictures: http://imgur.com/a/bsS2O
Here are two pics of the stone, for those who don't wish to visit an outside site.
I may be a bit slow on updating, but that's only because I'll be uploading and arranging pics as I go. The next post will be about how I chose a spot in the yard and dug and set the foundation.