Friday 27 June 2008

Finished oven!

It's finally finished! The last week has seen a lot of activity - laying a floor in the summerhouse, adding table and chairs, and kitting the summerhouse out with the tools I made over the last few months. I've treated all the wood now, which hides the fact that much of it was recycled - you can barely tell now that this used to be a fence!

The floor is concrete paving blocks, laid on a dumpy bag of sand that was a gift from a neighbour who wanted rid of it. I was originally going to lay it in herringbone pattern, then realised that meant cutting a lot of bricks, so went for a basketweave pattern instead. A bit of judicious fiddling and I only needed to cut the blocks to fit round the oven circle.

Here's the inside, with some of my firewood stacked up (thanks to my friend the tree surgeon for that - only 2 tons left to split now, and then I can have my front lawn back). The pine table and chairs were second hand from ebay - £25 the lot. I bought the peels, while the rest of the tools were made from scrap landrover aluminium and broom handles. Here's those fancy LED switches that I built into the flint block walls - the red one works the thermometer, while the blue one... ... works a 12V halogen light fitted in the rafters, shown below. It's just the right angle to shine into the oven, so I can see what I'm cooking. The power for these comes courtesy of an old car battery, charged by a 5W solar panel fitted to the roof. The bracket for the 12V light is more scrap aluminium (see - I told you all that junk would be useful one day).
And finally, below, is the instruction manual. Much prettier than my original notes on which thermocouple was placed where. The drawing was burnt into the wood (a salavaged scrap oak floorboard offcut) using a soldering iron, then treated with linseed oil afterwards. The numbers 1-6 remind me where my thermocouples are placed - so I can select the right one using the rotary switch on the front of the oven.


Next - start cooking!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Really enjoyed your blog, hope I will get the motivation to have a go soon but materials can be hard to come by - you seem to have the knack!

Carl said...

Glad you enjoyed it - more to come once I get some more cooking done! The key to finding the right materials is simply taking your time, and talking to people. I got a few things by posting 'wanted' ads on Freecycle, and ebay will turn up what you need in 6 months or so. Patience is a benefit!