So what about peel ovens and brick pizza ovens built 200 years ago, were they built from the materials available now?
Obviously not, and I couldn't agree more that things were built back in the day with the materials available, and to a large extent they were better than a lot of stuff now. But specially made fire bricks for pizza ovens, wood stoves kilns etc, have been developed over more recent years, which I know are more costly.
From when Jesus was a lad we used to build from natural stone and rock, and to stick it all together we used combinations of lime and volcanic ash etc, and yet some of those buildings have far outlasted most of the modern-day stuff.
Cement as we know it now (Portland Cement) was only developed some 200 years ago, and can actually be quite harmful when used to re-point buildings made from older traditional clay bricks or sandstone which were originally built using a cement-free lime-based mortar. You see, Portland cement is impervious and is a barrier to moisture, therefore, when it is used to repair/re-point more porous type clay brick or sandstone type building blocks, it not only acts as a barrier for the moisture to get into the joints, it also acts as a barrier when the moisture absorbed by the bricks and stone tries to get out. Consequently in very cold and freezing conditions, the moisture contained in those bricks and stone freezes, resulting in the faces of the bricks and stones being blown off. You have probably noticed this in older buildings given the chillier conditions in Taz
I actually renovated an old basalt rock building on a property we recently owned, which needed re-pointing, and I didn’t want to use cement for the reasons above. I wanted the walls to be able to breath as they once did through the use of traditionally made lime mortar, and so I made my own lime putty/mortar. It was quite laborious and time consuming, and the weather conditions had to be just right or else the mortar wouldn’t dry out if it was too cold and damp, or if too warm it would dry too quickly and crack. I’ll tell you what though, that sh1t dried as hard as nails when it went off.
Lime mortar breathes, cement mortar doesn’t.
The improvements I have made to mine over the years are no so much design, but going larger, cutting bricks on an angle to help with smaller joints,
Oh and Losh, you need to work on cutting them bricks on an angle
