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Oil barrel Pizza Oven (how to make one)

11/11/2015

8 Comments

 
After a semi successful attempt at a clay pizza oven with captain and the duke, I decided the best way to make a portable oven was in steel. The shape came in the form of an empty oil barrel, this blog will take you through how I made it.
Credit to Joe P and Bartosz for the mad welding and oil barrel acquisition skills.
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1. Secure an oil barrel, I picked mine up for free, most farms will have them lying around and will be happy for you to take them!
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2. The first step is to make it stand on its side, I folded some 2mm steel sheet into two U shapes and sat them on top of the barrel. I bridged them with a couple of lengths of steel angle (40x40mm) to give a stable base and welded them in place.
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3. Next is the chimney, I used a 6" stove pipe for this. I had a wood burner fitted recently and it came with a length of stove pipe for free which I didn't use. First mark out the hole and cut out, I used a plasma cutter but you could chain drill around the perimeter and use a file/hacksaw or even tin snips. Cut the stove pipe to around 400 mm long and weld it to the top of the barrel. The coating on the stove pipe is enamel which means it is rock hard, use a stone angle grinding disc to remove the enamel where it needs to be welded.

I also cut the opening whilst the plasma cutter was on, again you could use hand tools or an angle grinder to do this.
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4. Now to put in the base which will take the fire and the pizzas. First drill 3 x 10mm holes down each side just lower than the level as the bottom of the opening. Insert 10mm rod or studding across the width of the barrel. These will need to be welded each side and trimmed off, alternatively if you used stud put a nut on each end, see the pic below where the rods are still sticking out prior to being welded.

5. You can then measure the inside and cut a sheet of steel to fit, you will need to cut it in half lengthways in order to get it inside, they should be a good fit so nothing can fall down the gap, and so it can be welded.

6. I was concerned that the steel would be too thin above the fire area and would just burn through, my solution to this was to put some more steel over the areas directly over the fire, again using 2mm sheet steel I folded some covers to weld over the top. As I didn't have any steel rollers I used a metal bender to do a series of folds as close to the shape as I could.

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Cut a steel sheet to fit inside
7. Kiln shelves
The first stage was to lay some kiln shelf sections in the base to take the fire and the pizzas, I used what I had from the first pizza oven and managed to tessellate them together quite neatly.

I plan to replace these at some stage as it is best not to have any joins in the area that you will use to cook the pizza. If there any joins they tend to catch on the Pizza peel as you move the pizza in and out of the oven.

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8. The test burn
This shows the test burn, the smoke you can see is the paint burning off. make sure you have a sturdy steel or stone/brick base as there is some serous heat generated.



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​9. The Insulation

There is a massive amount of heat loss through the top of the Oven, we laid a piece of fibreglass insulation over the top as a temporary measure to see how it worked. You can just see the oven thermometer in the picture, it is off the scale!

10. The cook up!

The test cook was the day before my brother's wedding, the family were all over so Andy and Joel (captain and the duke) were on cooking duty see pics below of Andy in action!
By all accounts the pizzas where great!

11. the plan now is to build a permanent base, better insulation and perhaps build a brick arch over the top, or perhaps just stick it in the bcd garden and await another pizza party...
8 Comments
henri
11/11/2015 01:21:54 pm

Hello,

I was happy to find you through a search because you are doing something that me and a friend also want to do. Make a very simple and very portable pizza oven :)

We am in the process of buying the drum so not as far as you are yet but I am very curious how you are doing with your project and if you have any results yet.

Would be happy to share some thoughts.

Greetings,

Henri

Reply
chris
11/11/2015 01:22:51 pm

Hi Henri,

Yes it is finished now and works a treat! Look out for Part 2 of the build pictures soon, I will try and post them over the weekend.

Good luck with your Oven!

Reply
henri
11/11/2015 01:23:28 pm

Looking forward to it !

henri
11/11/2015 01:24:31 pm

Very good looking pizza ! It is the first time I see a pizza comming out of such a "simple" oven. There are many pictures from pizza's out of brick ovens but yours hardly has any brick, only for the cooking floor. Very nice and encouraging result.

Do you feel you need the insulation ? I know that you "need" it when using a brick oven but that is so you won't loose to much heat wich usualy is for baking bread (or anything) the next day. I have thought about it and I wonder if you realy need it. My thoughts are that most of the baking in the oven will come from the flames. In a way your oven design and very good results proofs this. You will hardly have any heat from radiation. You have close to zero thermal mass to do any radiating. To me this is proof that you do not need the bricks in the top for the thermall mass. That is, for pizza's! I do understand it will be needed for bread etc. but this desing is not for bread :)

I am very curious to a few things.... How long did it take to get the temps off the chart as you say it. How high do you think the temperature finaly was and how long did it actualy take to cook that gorgious looking pizza...

Thanks for the part 2. Very encouraging !

Reply
chris
11/11/2015 01:24:57 pm

Hi Henri,

I think the insulation is needed as it gets really hot but then cools down really quickly so you end up using a lot of wood to maintain the temperature.

The idea is to keep the heat in for longer to save on fuel. The pizzas took approx 3/4 minutes to cook spinning them round half way. I estimate the temperature got up to 275-300 degree c after about half an hour, but dropped quite quickly once the wood had burned down.

If you just want to cook a couple if pizzas then I don't think you will need it just load it up with wood and cook your pizzas!

Chris

Reply
henri
11/11/2015 01:25:28 pm

ok. Thanks. For me it would indeed be to bake a few fast pizza's. I do have a brick oven but getting that up to temp to back pizza's will take me between 2 and 2 1/2 hours. When it is finaly up to temp, it bakes perfect but it just takes a long time to get there. I always feel that I waste a lot of wood because I never get to baking bread or anything the next day (even though I plan to do that every time :) ) That is why I am looking into a faster oven and would like to build one for as little money as possible :)

One thing is sure, your build proofs that nice results can come from something as simple as an oil drum. I will give it a try myself.

Thanks for all the info and keep enjoying those pizza's. They sure do look great :)

Alberta
4/21/2019 01:27:27 pm

Hi, very nice website, cheers!
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Reply
Giuseppe
4/6/2020 09:47:19 pm

Hi, great job, can you tell me how hot the insulation got once wrapped round?

Reply



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