Chris Holcombe

Just put together a little dry stacked grill today. Fired it up and it works great. It was super cheap but i wonder if there’s some modifications i can make to increase the durability of it. As i understand it, cinder blocks don’t hold up well against flames. My neighbor gave me a hand stacking this and we turned the bottom blocks on their side to get some airflow under the fire. You can hear it make a bit of a whoosh sound which is cool and keeps the smoke down. I was was thinking a cheap mod could be to move the cinder blocks out a little bit and line the interior burn area with bricks. Any other cheap mods i can try?

Not well. None of them rooted. I’m not sure what happened, maybe blue elders just don’t like rooting from stem cuttings

Mike Barkley wrote:That is a great piece of work Chris. What did you use as a grill or base plate?

I used regular red brick. I probably should’ve used fire brick

Thanks! I feel like this has given me a lot of good experience and now I understand how useful these ovens are. They produce a really good tasting food.

I finally had the time this summer to build my first mud oven. It came out pretty well and it works for the most part. It has a lime plaster outer shell. I think I messed up by using 1/4” hardware cloth as the inner support structure. Instead of stacking the mud flat I pressed it against the hardware cloth. That created a problem where now tiny bits of mud are flaking off as I use it. I’ve started thinking about what might be a good next project. I’m thinking an oven with a fire brick interior in the style of walker.

This is great! Would it also be possible to render it as an epub? It displays a lot nicer on small mobile screens. Just a thought

Yeah if you have some in your area that would be super cool! Send me a PM

thomas rubino wrote:A  much better build Chris!
I suspect that your stove was not warmed up enough.
The riser needs to be the hottest portion to maintain a solid draft.
The flames will always take the easy way out if they can.

EDIT) after looking at your photos I would make your riser a couple of bricks taller.

Yeah… I started with a little fire and then got excited and put a ton of sticks in lol. I reread the startup section in Weisners Rocket mass heater book and it says to go slowly and make sure the chimney is hot because the J tube is like a kitchen sink bend and wants to plug up with cold air.

OK I’ll see if I can get this closer to the ideal 1:2:4 ratio. Once I’ve got this running properly I’m curious how putting a pot on top of the exit chimney to boil water for canning won’t mess it up and cause it to start back drafting again.

Ok I’ve rebuilt it as a mini J tube with some mud to seal the air gaps in the bricks. It seems to mostly work well except if I load it up with too many sticks and then it reverses direction and I’m not sure why.
I can upload a short video to YouTube if that helps