Making a wood burning oven

Our goal:

    To make first rate pizza, bread and roasted mammal components

Our solution:

   Build a 36" diameter wood burning oven

Why wood burning?

1) We live in a forest

2) Wood smoke tastes good

3) We had a boat load of bricks from a chimney we demolished when we remodeled the house

Our story...

So I made a brick box like this

Add Support structures 

6 inch I-beam I had left over from a job                                 Temporary supports for concrete pour

This concrete slab that holds the oven up is going to get hot and that will make the slab expand. I don't want it to push on the walls of the brick box and possibly break the box so.....

First we cover the top of the bricks with 2 layers of 6 mil plastic to start making a slip joint

Then add some spacers made from foam insulation to keep 

the concrete 3/4 inch from the sides of the brick box

The foam will need to come out later so I tied mason line to some 1/4 inch 

dowels so that I could pull it out after the concrete has set

* I'll let you know how this works

Update ( The foam spacers came out perfectly naturally...hehe)

And covered them with duct tape to keep the concrete out

Next I added 1/2 inch Hardie board to fill the space between 

the I-beam and the blue spacers. 

                                                       

Next comes a mat of rebar 

And a form for the concrete