Another salvaged rocket oven

I have not been able to figure out how to get the images where I want them to show up in the text, so they are in a random order at the bottom. Sorry about that.

My husband and I have been planning a rocket stove/oven project for some time. Even before we moved to the Arizona desert at the beginning of January we had made a tin can rocket stove for emergency preparedness. Now in the hot Arizona desert we have a goal of cooking outdoors as much as possible when the weather is hot. (We are also planning a large solar oven project)

We have been grateful for all the help we have been finding here at Permies.

We found a free stove (with a broken ceramic top) to convert for our project. We had already built a roof for our "Rocket Kitchen" and recently built a table to support the stove along with a salvaged bathroom sink and granite countertop.

We originally had the outlet riser begin at the bottom as suggested in the book The Rocket Powered Oven. This wasn't working well for us since we were having great trouble keeping the temperature down to where we wanted it. Also even though the flue riser went up about 4 feet over the top of the oven we got a little better draft when we just cut a hole in the top.

This hole in the top can also be used as a stove burner when the oven is being used as in the video Rocket Kitchen, as well as opening the oven to use the burner when the oven isn't being used.  We had originally planned to have a stand along rocket stove (probably the mud Himalayan type) in the kitchen, but probably the oven setup will work for both for us.

The cross section is 5 inches, but we are having trouble keeping the temperature down so if anyone has suggestions that would be nice. We had to periodically open the door to lower the temperature and we still cooked at a higher than usual temperature but the bread today came out really well. We are using extremely dry and well seasoned mesquite wood that has been lying around on our property for a long time. we are using very little wood. Anything over about an inch in diameter burns too hot. Just a 7 inch long piece of about 1/2 inch diameter every 5 or 8 minutes seems better once things are going along well.

We put a piece of 5 inch pipe in place to cob the riser and we did it in 4 applications, with 2 applications each day since they dry very quickly here. After each application became solid enough not to sag we pulled up the pipe so that only about an inch was inserted at the top of the last application before beginning the next application. The riser is only about an inch thick at the very top. That part was very awkward to reach. My husband had to cut out more of the plywood before we could finish because the hole wasn't big enough for us to get our hands in the with the cob in them. Now the riser is only made out of cob with no metal inside. So far it is holding up fine.

We still need to put cob on the core.

If anyone is interested in more information I will post more about this.