One Or Two Doors, Both Please

Let’s talk doors. The reality here is that you will need at least one door to close the door opening that is cut into the thermal layer. The purpose of this door it to close up the oven and allow all the heat and steam to be kept inside the oven to cook your food and not allowed to flow out the door opening. I made this door out of some 2×3 lumber that I had on hand and some screws.

This is really simple construction. I measured the door opening width all the way up and cut then stacked the lumber pieces inside the opening. Just to be safe I numbered each piece starting with #1 so I didn’t mix up the order since my door opening is slightly bowed. The top of the door I just used the arch template and marked the curve. Then I used skill saw and cut down to my curve line by making angled shaving cuts.

I did screw the backside braces on first before I cut the arch. This worked OK and if I make another oven door I plan on building it a little differently. First off I would use angled cross braces to make the door stiffer and less prone to shift. I would also have two handles not one and I would change the handle orientation from horizontal to vertical.
This is by far from the only design you can make. I found oven doors made from all kinds of materials and in different designs but, I used what I had.
Now after cooking in our oven for a while I learned that trying to cook with live fire in the oven wasn’t quite as efficient as I wanted. I started thinking about the fuel efficient stoves that I was planning on building as part of the kitchen and wondered how I could use that idea to make the oven more efficient. Well after all my research I came up with a design for an outer door. Similar to the cast iron doors you would see on on the old brick bread and pizza ovens.
So my question was how can I make and hang this door as well as make it work to make the oven more efficient? What I found out was that by adding the outside door I could reflect and recirculate the heat in the oven while at the same time reducing the turbulence in the front of the oven. As you can see in the picture above without the door there is a lot of turbulence. This is easy to see when there is smoke in the oven as the turbulence shows immediately.
As you can see in the picture above the door helps to direct the air flow and reflect some heat back into the oven. It also makes the fire burn hotter as the oxygen mix in the fire is better controlled. It reduces the flames but, increases the embers which increases the heat and reduces the smoke making the oven more efficient.

Here’s what the door looked like when I first made it. Since this door was an after thought I had to build it based on the size available inside the brick surround and I had to find a way to hang the door. Since this outer door has worked so well I felt that it should be something to point out and suggest that you think about if you plan on building your own oven. I will go into the fabrication of the door, the required math and how I hung the door in the next post.