Reflections of The Dragonfly Den, June 2009–and Beyond: The Oven Stand, Time to Dry Stack and Ponder Options!

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

The Oven Stand, Time to Dry Stack and Ponder Options!

While keeping the foundation slab moist as it cured, again I hit the books, the Forno Bravo forum, and the Internet. Confirmed, yes I’d really love to build a white oven, but the black oven was going to be much more realistic for my limited brick & mortar skills. I reviewed my downloaded FB plans and started figuring out my materials list. I am not good at visualizing details, so I picked up some concrete blocks and started to layout what would be my oven stand. I really never liked the “dark hole” used for wood storage under a lot of the ovens that I was seeing so Susan & I came up with something different that would give us some serious flexibility for storage and work surfaces...carts that rolled in & out of bays in the oven stand’s block base.

I talked to the welding instructor at Umpqua Community College where we worked and he said that building the bay carts would be a great project for one of his second year students. I’d have to wait until the oven stand was completed to get the measurements...but at least that part of the plan appeared to be a go.

I worked a bit more on the dry stacking for the oven stand until I felt I’d gotten the best fit for the foundation slab corner. Being basically cheap, I scrounged pieces of wood to make a form for the concrete top of the stand.

Note: When you dry stack block, you obviously will have a shorter stack than when you mortar that same stack of blocks. Not a big deal, but it can be significant! Just be aware that normally you will be adding about 1/4" with each mortar layer. So, mortar a stack of 4 blocks on a slab and it will be up to an 1" taller than a dry stack of 4 blocks...just saying, be aware!