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Wood fired oven - housed in dry stone structure

33K views 190 replies 24 participants last post by  drystoneoven 
#1 ·
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.
 
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#180 ·
I had good fun building the bridge, and all the children appeared to enjoy it very much. And luckily the landowner, who really knew little of the project, approved greatly and gave me license to keep building anything that might add to the enjoyment of the place.[/QUOTE]





Nice work. I have a customer like that now. They are few and far between.
 
#181 ·
I had good fun building the bridge, and all the children appeared to enjoy it very much. And luckily the landowner, who really knew little of the project, approved greatly and gave me license to keep building anything that might add to the enjoyment of the place.




Nice work. I have a customer like that now. They are few and far between.[/QUOTE]

I didn't charge anything to build the bridge. I did it as much for my own satisfaction as anything else.
 
#183 ·
Finished it!

Finished up the oven this past Thursday. I built some steps today and will build a mosaic on the ground directly in front of the oven. I built one sitting wall to the right and I'm in the process of building an identical one to the left. Here are the new albums:
14. The Stone Vault and Front Arch
http://imgur.com/a/5s7VE

15. Building up to the Capstone
http://imgur.com/a/DxoQf

16. Capstone and Finish
http://imgur.com/a/mqk9b



Once it's all cleaned up and the landscaping is done I'll post a few more pics. God damn that took forever!
 
#188 ·
That capstone was the piece on which the whole oven was based. I never would've tried it if I didn't have the cap! But in the end, it caused me a lot of worrying. At times I wondered if I was crazy to think I could get it up there without breaking it or killing someone. Luckily neither happened!

The real funny thing is that I have not seen a single other rock which I could've got which would've worked as a single cap. Odd that I even saw this one, that it was on my father's property, and that it was even accessible.
 
#190 ·
I tried to keep a loose running tab of costs in my head. Even scrounging a lot of the material. Add in my time and I couldn't build mine for less than $8000 if a customer wanted one. Would probably even charge more.
So yours would cost $15-$20 K :eek:
To me that's crazy money, but some of my customers will pay that for an antique piece of furniture for a weekend home.
 
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