Pizza Oven
30 Jul 2022
I designed a sheet metal pizza oven! This project is mostly for me to learn how to design for sheet metal and practice welding. The oven bakes a 14” pizza with a wood fire, and features a front vent to induce convective airflow that evenly cooks the pie.
Although the chimney is in the center of the oven, the vent is actually in the front. This forces hot air to travel across the entire oven to escape, heating the pizza evenly. The fire is fed mainly by holes at the bottom of the firebox, and circulating cold air from the vent/chimney.
The oven is insulated at the door and on the roof behind the vent by 1” of fiberglass insulation, a feature that most commercial home pizza ovens do not have.
The pizza is not actually cooked on steel, there is a 14” x 16” ceramic pizza stone, which will evenly cook the crust, and is removable for cleaning.
Speaking of cleaning, the entire firebox is removable to dump ash. It is held in place by flanges at the top of each side that fit into slots. The top and sides are one welded piece, that fits onto the base with aligning tabs and slots. This allows for the interior to be completely accessible for cleaning.
This oven will include a thermometer, although I’m not sure where to put it yet, so I’ve omitted it from the CAD. I can’t put it in the front since I don’t want to measure the temperature of the vent air, I want to measure the oven air. However, putting it in the back behind the chimney would make it difficult to read. Right now I’m thinking of putting it on the door where it would display measure the coldest part of the oven, but I’m undecided. A future upgrade could be adding a propane burner module to replace the firebox.
Next for this project, is to waterjet the sheet metal and bend/weld the components. The biggest unknown is how much free sheet metal I can get from Purdue, which I will know when I get back to campus in a few weeks. I designed for 1/8” steel, but this project could just as easily work with 1/16”, and I’ll take what’s available.