Oven Resurrection

Dear Everyone,
This is long overdue! I wanted to thank you all for the help you rendered to us during the Mix Reunion, (due to the unfortunate mishap with “Little Betty #1″) especially Emily for organizing it. That was quite the experience. Laurie and I are very grateful for all the love and support. It was an experience that made me feel even closer to our extended family and will always be fondly remembered as “The Broken Oven Reunion”.
So, in tribute to you and your generosity, here are some pictures, and commentary, of the new and improved oven. I tried to load the pictures in chronological order. The first picture illustrates “firing” the first layer (refractory cement) of the oven. The temperature was over 2,000 degrees. The next shows the look of the first layer as well. The grooves in it allow the second layer to take hold of the first. The third and fourth pictures show the second layer of a Perlite and Mortar mix. This is the insulation layer. I am not sure if you can see, but this layer usually cracks substantially. This is okay, because we come back and fill in all the cracks with more mortar. It also gets covered with a final layer of stucco. This is shown in the remaining picture.
In order to avoid the same mishap, Jason and I drilled 10 holes into the brick base, and filled them with cement and rebar, that runs into the oven itself. An additional 4 holes were drilled all the way through the brick and steel base to allow 4 anchor bolts to bolt the oven to the steel structure. Needless to say, this oven isn’t going anywhere. The oven is much larger as well. The inside of the new oven is the same dimension as the outside of the last oven. It now measures 4 feet long by 3 feet wide.
We recently used Betty #2 at a deaf and hard of hearing event (it was a strangely quiet event). She performed even better than Little Betty #1! We were able to use whole logs to stoke the fire, instead of having to split them. That saved us a lot of time and fuel, as it burned longer. It was really nice to have all the room as well. Spinning pizzas in this one is a lot easier. We could cook two or three pizzas at a time if we wanted to, but since we are already cooking a pizza in 30-50 seconds, it wouldn’t really save us any time (and I would probably burn more than I cooked).
Well, that was a longer email than I anticipated. I hope you didn’t fall asleep in the middle. Again, thank you so much. You made Bettie #2 possible.
With Love,

Dear Everyone,

This is long overdue! I wanted to thank you all for the help you rendered to us during the Mix Reunion, (due to the unfortunate mishap with “Little Betty #1″) especially Emily for organizing it. That was quite the experience. Laurie and I are very grateful for all the love and support. It was an experience that made me feel even closer to our extended family and will always be fondly remembered as “The Broken Oven Reunion”.

So, in tribute to you and your generosity, here are some pictures, and commentary, of the new and improved oven. I tried to load the pictures in chronological order. The first picture illustrates “firing” the first layer (refractory cement) of the oven. The temperature was over 2,000 degrees. The next shows the look of the first layer as well. The grooves in it allow the second layer to take hold of the first. The third and fourth pictures show the second layer of a Perlite and Mortar mix. This is the insulation layer. I am not sure if you can see, but this layer usually cracks substantially. This is okay, because we come back and fill in all the cracks with more mortar. It also gets covered with a final layer of stucco. This is shown in the remaining picture.

In order to avoid the same mishap, Jason and I drilled 10 holes into the brick base, and filled them with cement and rebar, that runs into the oven itself. An additional 4 holes were drilled all the way through the brick and steel base to allow 4 anchor bolts to bolt the oven to the steel structure. Needless to say, this oven isn’t going anywhere. The oven is much larger as well. The inside of the new oven is the same dimension as the outside of the last oven. It now measures 4 feet long by 3 feet wide.

We recently used Betty #2 at a deaf and hard of hearing event (it was a strangely quiet event). She performed even better than Little Betty #1! We were able to use whole logs to stoke the fire, instead of having to split them. That saved us a lot of time and fuel, as it burned longer. It was really nice to have all the room as well. Spinning pizzas in this one is a lot easier. We could cook two or three pizzas at a time if we wanted to, but since we are already cooking a pizza in 30-50 seconds, it wouldn’t really save us any time (and I would probably burn more than I cooked).

Well, that was a longer email than I anticipated. I hope you didn’t fall asleep in the middle. Again, thank you so much. You made Bettie #2 possible.

With Love,

THE ROMA STONE