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I Forge Iron

Combination forge and pizza oven?


Seek

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My wife gave the green light to build a wood burning pizza oven in the garden. Hurray! But my garden is rather small so it would be efficient if I could combine it with a small forge.

- Is this feasable at all? Or should I forget it immediately?

- I forge small items, occasionally, and I use charcoal.

- Side tuyere?

- Size?

Many thanks allready for ideas.

 

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That strikes me as one of those things that's theoretically possible, but probably not very feasible. A forge is designed to generate very localized, very high heat, while an oven is designed to distribute a medium-high heat all around what you're cooking. Any sacrifices you make to one of those functions to accommodate the other is going to have a negative effect on what the original function is supposed to do. Better to make two separate constructions.

There is one thing that springs to mind, however, and that is to design your pizza oven in such a way that there is storage space underneath for your forge. 

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You are probably right, but...

How about making a sink, or pit, in the middle of the floor. This pit has a tuyere on the side. Cover it with a flat stone when using the oven for baking pizza or bread.

 

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6 hours ago, Seek said:

Yes, that is most probably the best solution. A forge to the side of a nice pizza oven. Cover the forge when not in use so it can be used as a table for the pizza prepping business.

 

That's the way to go.  A pizza oven is quite a different animal than a forge--you want the brick enclosure to absorb heat and get hot as heck to radiate out to cook the pizza where a forge wants an air induced confined fire without a bunch of structure to steal that heat away.  Going with a separate "coverable" pot in the same general structure for a forge sounds like a good compromise.

Since they are basically the same construction, you might want to make sure that pizza oven is large enough in volume to handle bread also.  Bread from a wood fired oven is wonderful.  Lots of good plans on the internet.  Just don't let your wife know that you are also using it for tempering metalwork :) 

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I just want to commend you on your enlightened self interest!  I love the idea so much I had to do some research.  It looks like it is common for coal and charcoal pizza ovens to have the coals in a bed off to the side.  You should be able to use the bed on the side as a forge with the right design.  The short video below is a decent example of what it would look like in practice.  Just add a blower for use when you want to forge.

https://youtu.be/gOgVUhEeRcQ

 

Lou

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I am now more or less determined to make a table, wide enough for an oven on one side and a forge on the other side. I allready meassured in the garden and it should fit perfectly well. Thanks for the advice everybody!

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