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Double chamber cob oven - Key proportions?

 
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Not sure where this goes, moderator, please move if I posted in the wrong place.

Hi all,

I bought the plans for a double chamber cob oven from Erica and Ernie, but have a question on the key proportions if I change the shape of the oven.

I may have located some wedge and arch shaped fire brick, so I need to know what proportions I need to observe for the tunnel shaped oven to work to spec.

Anyone know the answer, or the question? :)

Thanks!
 
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Brick barrel vault ovens are lovely, but the proportions and performance are going to be different from a dome oven.

I would suggest looking into plans or books that are intended to be built with the types of bricks you found, as that will likely be far easier to build, with more predictable results, than adapting our dome oven proportions.

Building a dome oven with brick involves a lot of carefully angled cuts, and again, a plan that's been tested for those sized bricks will be far smoother to build.

If you have fewer than 200 free bricks, you could also consider just using them for the floor (alternating the wedge angles up and down so the result is flat on top) and following the original plans for the earthen dome.

For an example of differences in proportion:
Kiko Denzer worked out that the door height should be about 62% of the total interior height of a dome style earthen oven for good heat capture.  I don't know what proportion should be used for a barrel oven because the proportions of volume to surface area above the door would be different. A lot of barrel ovens I've seen don't even have a separate height door lip or end wall, it's all just the same height tunnel, and the door covers the end.
I think barrel ovens were more common historically in places that were doing high volume baking, and would have cared more about quantity than precision. One advantage of the barrels' rectangular floor footprint, without any restrictions from a smaller door frame, is it's easier to slide trays and paddles in and out quickly.

Also, our plans discuss the catenary arch shape for strong, self supporting masonry. But a lot of brick barrel ovens are a simple radial arch, which is easier to make with factory brick wedges. These circular shaped arches may need a little bit of extra weight or thicker side supports to balance outward thrust at the bottom (feet) of the arch.

Here is one forum where folks discuss a lot of different, modern backyard wood fired ovens, where you.might pick up some relevant search terms:
https://pinkbird.org/w/Types+of+wood+fired+pizza+ovens/363

Or you could just whack them together without mortar, light a fire in it, and see if you get roughly the results you want. Bricks are endlessly recyclable. Plaster some clay mud on the outside if you need it more airtight for a fair trial.  You can do this on a few square feet of non-combustible dirt, with a few more feet of safe space in front of the door to scrape out live coals.

I might suggest using your biggest pan plus at least a couple of inches as your minimum floor proportion, about 4 inches extra space at the door end to allow for different doors. Or look up standard catering/cookie sheet sizes if you hope to bake bigger in future.

Yours,
Erica W
 
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