As noted in my temporary pizza oven writeup (and reiterated in my “Pizza Obsessives” interview by Slice – check it out!), making an effective pizza oven can be as simple as stacking blocks. Use a quickly made jig to build an easy brick arch roof, and screw a couple pieces of angle iron around it to hold everything together. That’s it – pizza time, all the time.

The ease of the design was demonstrated recently by Thomas Niccum, who used my writeup to reconstruct his own oven. Total time from construction to eating pizza? 10 hours – and that includes transporting a pallet of cinderblock into the back yard one by one.

Niccum was kind enough to send detailed notes and photos of his build. They’ll help you put one together, too. Maybe this weekend – it is summer, after all.
Click to continue »

The temporary brick pizza oven I helped build got a lot of attention and a number of questions about the jig used to place the bricks into the arch. Here are the details and a rough blueprint:

-Legs: 2×4, approximately 12″ long (extending 9.25″ below the arch). Qty: 2
-Arch:  1/2″ plywood, 32.25″ wide, 5.25″ at its peak. Qty: 2
The legs extend below the bottom of the arch 9 1/4″ – however, the exact height was adjusted on-site (by cutting part of them off) by the instructor to match up with the size of the bricks he used. In order for the arched bricks to lock into place, you want the bottom edge of the arch to be just below the walls. On our oven, we did a stack of bricks on their side (about 9″) and one layer laying down (about 2″) . Measure your bricks and adjust the height of the arch accordingly.

The two legs are screwed in between the two sides of the arch

To draw the curve, you want to know the radius of the arch you’re building. After doing the weekend class, the instructor gave me the jig we used, but no specifics on the dimensions. Using an online circle calculator with the measurements of the arch height (5.25″) and the chord length (straight-line distance between the two ends of the arch; 32.25″), I was able to determine the radius of the arch to be 27.39″. With the radius, you just need to make a line at that length, one end fixed and one with a pencil attached to it,  and use that to draw the curvature.

If you don’t have internet access and need to figure out the radius, here’s the equation:
radius = (rise^{2 +} (1/2 width)²) / 2 x rise

rise is the height of the arch
width is the length of the chord

Attach the two pieces of plywood with a few screws before cutting, and cut them as one piece to ensure that the curve matches. Use a jigsaw or a router set up to cut curves. Ultimately, the bricks will settle a bit so the curve doesn’t have to be cut perfectly, but try to get it close to make things easy.

Finally, I’m finished using my jig and am selling it cheap – anyone who is looking for one but doesn’t have the tools/time to make it (which would be weird, if you’re planning on building this oven), contact me via the link at the top of the page.

Good luck building!

After getting to use Pizzahacker’s perforated pizza peel, I decided to make a DIY version for myself. The idea behind a perforated peel is that it reduces the amount of flour that gets underneath the dough when placing it in the oven (too much flour will brown up and taste bitter), and possibly helps keep things from sticking by reducing the amount of friction underneath the dough. Here are the steps I took to make mine; results of how well it works will be posted shortly.

Materials needed:
-Aluminum pizza peel (I’m using a 12″x14″ peel that works well for my oven and pizza size)
-Drill press
-Small drill bit (about 1/16″)
-Slightly larger drill bit (~3/16″)
-Larger drill bit (3/8″ or 1/2″) or countersink drill bit
-Flat piece of cardboard (I used a cereal box)
-Two printed pages of the perforation template (PDF)  (A grid I made that has the holes place every 1.5cm.)
-Flat piece of scrap wood to go underneath the peel when drilling
-Pencil, masking tape, ruler and scissors

Step one:
Trace the outline of your peel on the cardboard. Cut the coardboard to match the peel. Find the halfway point (left to right) on the cardboard and mark it with a line.

Step two:
Place the center dot of the template printout to match with the center line on the cardboard. The center dot is the seventh dot over.
I decided to leave a small gap in the front of the peel, so my placement had the printout taped to the cardboard portrait orientation, with the larger margin on the top edge.

The paper won’t be wide enough for the cardboard, so cut a strip from the second printout for the left and right side, and line it up with the dots on the first piece. Tape in place, cut around the the cardboard and tape the whole thing to the peel.

Mark which holes you don’t want to drill – I crossed them out with a pencil to leave a margin on the top and sides.

Step three:
Put the small bit into the drill press (if you don’t have a drill press, a hand drill will suffice but will add some tedium to the project). Place the scrap piece of wood underneath the peel to help minimize distortion. Slowly drill through each dot on the template.

With the 10″ drill press I was using, there was one small section in the center that I was unable to reach. I decided to leave this as-is, instead of doing it by hand. I don’t think it will make a big difference. Also, I used a small bucket as a riser for the handle of the peel, but make sure the level is pretty close – you want the surface to be as flat as possible so you don’t end up bending the aluminum.

Step four:
Using the middle sized drill bit, carefully enlarge each hole.
At this point I started to wonder if I was going to compromise too much of the peel’s strength so I opted for an alternating pattern of small holes and larger holes, with the front edge and both sides larger holes.

Step five:
Remove the cardboard template. The top holes will look pretty good, but you’ll have a fair amount of flanging coming off the drilled holes. Using the largest of the three drill bits (make sure it has a very slightly tapered head), VERY slowly drill the excess off the peel. Bevel the edges by pressing just part way beyond the surface of the peel. Do this for all the holes, flip and repeat on the back side – this will give you a nice smooth surface.

One thing not to do: wire brush on a grinder or drill. This won’t take the flanging off the drilled holes, but will leave a roughed-up, pitted area.

That’s it! Perforated pizza peel ready for action.

I’ve been gathering materials and information to build a CNC machine for a while, but keep putting it off because I haven’t thought of any exact application I need one for just yet (aside from milling a Hellraiser-style cube). Then I saw this: a CNC milled all-aluminum tape dispenser. A 1lb thing of beauty. Beautifully crafted, ready to deliver whatever length of tape you need, short or long.

This project has kick-started my creative juices with a whole slew of fun CNC projects. Of course, anything done in metal will need a sturdy machine (the great book Build Your Own CNC Machine has all the steps and templates to make one from MDF), but I can envision a wood version of this tape dispenser that would look super kickass as well.

It’s absolute overkill. Over a pound of 6061 aluminum, every part CNC machined and yes, it’s just a scotch tape dispenser. This is the creation of the Advanced CNC class at Laney College as taught by Bob Rice. I programmed and machined all the parts from drawings using MasterCAM, a Chevalier toolroom mill and a Haas SL lathe. All the threads were single-point cut and threaded holes rigid tapped. Every part required at least two operations, every face is machined.

Check out a few more details and photos here. Also, AcuteAero is doing some seriously cool projects – electric bikes, skateboards, etc. – I recommend checking his site out.