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[all4pizza]

so in my new place I have gas oven. started by removing cleaning lock to use cleaning cycle. gas (mine at least) only burns from bottom burner in the clean cycle. did not produce great pies, good but not stellar. then i got to thinking, ive always thought if i could trick the oven.....so i looked around in the new oven and saw clearly the probe that measures internal temperature (and tells my broil/bake function to shut off when i hit 550) pulled the back cover off the oven and one screw later the probe was out of the box (still connected, just hanging down and not inside the oven) this left a hole in the inside that would allow heat to enter the insulation , so I found a nice 2 inch bolt in the garage that would fill and cover the hole and shoved it in through the hole from the indside.  next I cut a peice of 14 guage sheet metal I had laying around to 19X23 (size of the rack) and put that on top of  the rack positioned 7 inches from the broiler. on top of that a 19" fibrament stone.  currently the stone temp is at about 740 and the top of the oven is around 900...still climbing...im feeling pretty good about this.  takes about 5 min to pull probe and plug hole.  5 minutes to go back to normal for day to day use.  and its crazy hot.  I will continue to heat for a while to see how high i can go.  it has been heating for about 45 minutes as of now.

stupid crap to follow: I AM IN NO WAY SAYING ANYONE ELSE SHOULD DO THIS, YOU WILL LIKELY BURN DOWN YOUR HOUSE AND I WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY INBFORMATION YOU GOT FROM THIS THREAD. DO NOT DO THIS!!!!! YOU ARE CRAZY IF YOU TRY THIS!! I AM ONLY TALKING ABOUT A DREAM I HAD, ITS NOT REAL.   

[all4pizza]

seemed to top out at 775 stone and 920 top of oven, i am going to try a few more things to contain heat to the stone.

[pcampbell]

So do you run the broiler then?? Any pictures?

[pacoast]

Good work. Do you have any sense of whether the max temperature at the moment is limited by the size of the burner or by not having enough insulation in the oven? If you notice heat leaking out like a sieve or even very high temperatures at the vent it may point to the latter.

I was lamenting the lack of a brick oven here the other day, which is not in my immediate budget. So I went & bought a commercial gas oven at an auction. I don't mean a pizza (deck) oven but rather a (cheaply built) commercial version of a home gas oven. In my case it's an Imperial IR-6. The thermostat only indicates 500F & my thermocouple says it only really gets to 480F. But.. that's before we modify it.

Again as the OP pointed out DO NOT DO THIS AT HOME. IT'S JUST A DREAM, I'M NOT SUGGESTING YOU DO ANYTHING ALONG THESE LINES, WHICH WOULD BE DANGEROUS AND ALL OF THIS IS HYPOTHETICAL ANYWAY. IF YOU'RE A LAWYER, STOP NOW, GO AWAY AND READ SOME OTHER POST.

i'm sure that this oven is a lot lower quality than yours & it also has no cleaning cycle. It's redeeming feature I think is having really big, oversized commercial burners. I temporarily defeated the temp sensor and it easy reached 700F. However this oven leaks like a sieve and is very poorly insulated. It doesn't even have a door gasket. So my next step is to disassemble it and get a ceramic insulating blanket around the oven chamber and a door gasket installed. I also plan to add an electric broiler element & convection fan. And if all goes well, I hope to eventually use a PID controller to control the temperature.

Let us know if you get farther with your oven and how your pizzas turn out with the extra heat!

[all4pizza]

well i have to asxsume it tops out at 775 due to both poor insulation and inadequate broiler burner ( the only one running for the upper poster) today i moved the  rack up to the top, so stone is only about 4-5 inches from burner, i am making my own rack out of some steel tube and the 14 guage metal i have currently sitting on the stock rack.  once that is done i will crowd the stone with firebrick as much as possible on that top shelfr, may even make another shelf to go under top rack and hold a sheet of fire brick. doing all this to contain the heat and to help with the heat loss when door is opened and closed.  as far as the oven, it isnt the cheapest on the aisle, but more middle ground, and i do know it is new. i can feel heat pouring out around the seal and am considering a slide in cover to put in place during heat up, something like the metal panel that is slid into place on a wod fired hearth while it is heating, and then removed  for access. i expect to hit 800 tonight at the stone, im hoping the drop in volume between upper shelf and top will help overall, less heat up time, greater bounceback from open and close, and better heat from the top with the burner so close. I am currently without dough, so tonight i am going to throw a trader joes ball in there and try it out. probably burn on me, but im still eatin it

[all4pizza]

with it on top shelf i hit 925 stone temperature no problem, i also filled the vent hole at top of oven with wadded up aluminum foil/ clearly the heat escaping around the seal is enourmous as the knobs positioned on the front just above the started to melt and were measured around 200 degrees. i will remove these from now on. checked temperature of the wood on the side of oven (cabinet touching) it was only at about 105, so side insulation in the home oven seems good.. pizza was STELLAR, even just trader joes dough ball. tomorrow my dough......

[pacoast]

I bet your pizza was great if you were able to get your oven up to 900F +. I'm a bit jealous.

Not sure that the vent should be completely closed off though. I think that the oven needs some airflow for the gas combustion. I'm hoping that my oven ends up working as well as yours is. Any pizza pictures to share?

[all4pizza]

i took some pics,havent had a chance to pull them out the camera yet tho.  last night late i couldnt sleep so i went down and was just looking at the setup.  Discovered that my homemade (super sturdy) rack i built to handle the heat and weight in addition to containing the heat to the top more was actually a quarter inch too long.  in both the first tests it was barely hitting the door when it closed. keeping it open about half to 3/4 of an inch all around the top.  explains the melted knob. today i will fix and lower shelf again.  I feel like this was a big issue in the first test where i only hit 725. and i will uncover vent and see.....

[all4pizza]

couldnt really get into pies tonight, cooked one easy breezy pile o crap though, delicious and 800 degrees in 45 minutes easy. p.s. as a side note, after i turned on the broiler function I smelled a serious odor of gas, opened the door and kablam, fired up. aluminum foil in the vent was keeping it from lighting. took it out.

[all4pizza]

some pics, all traderf joes store bought dough, n one with anyu red sauce.

[all4pizza]

more of same

[all4pizza]

and more

[all4pizza]

you can actually see in the last pic how the door wasnt closing properly. dunno how i missed it for so long,

[Matthew]

Great looking pies, just watch you don't blow your house up

Matt

[all4pizza]

it would be worth it. 

[all4pizza]

well.....tonight i cranked her up, rack on second shelf, firebricks flanking the stone on either side. door fully closed an vent wide open. heat up was taking longer than before. finally threw the pizza in as i was starving and had concluded that the second shelf just wouldn't work even with the door closed properly. while watching it cook I could see the flame starting to dance away form the burner and dissapate......not getting enough air? was the open door actually helping...looks like it was.   Checked the temperature in the lower half of the box (oven) and it was about 200-250 degrees lower under the shelf I built than above. I think I have shrunk the chamber too much with the addition of the fore brick, and the distance between the burner and the stone is too great on the second shelf.  Now i need to get more air in there without cracking the door open at all times... where else can i get air from? thinkin I may put some openings in the shelf to allow air movement.  It really sucks that the flaw in the system was helping because i cant in good faith just leave the door cracked open. doesn't jive with my safety sense at all (what little there is) any one out there know more about this than I do??? clearly the additional airflow was helping me get better heat.......Lil stumped.

[Chef_Boy-R-Dee]

All4pizza,

 I too modify my oven but I just isolate the thermostat and make two different chambers in the oven...with the thermostat in the upper portion of the oven, and I cook the pies in the lower portion of the oven. Here's a thread i started a while ago:

http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,7549.0.html

I use a fibrament stone on the very bottom rack and seperate the two zones with unglazed quarrry tiles topped with aluminium foil. I've got it down pretty good now, my pies cook in about 4 minutes or so.

[mikeken]

Yep, got my Kitchenaid Electric oven to bypass the cleaning lock with a 1" washer and screw.  The control is unmarked but can be controlled to a precise temperature.  Had to add a BBQ thermometer with an "L" bracket to monitor the exact temperature.  Total of 3 stainless steel screws, a washer, $9 thermometer from Home Depot and $2 for the bracket.  Had to remove all the spices from the shelves above to keep them from getting cooked.  If anyone wants photos let me know.  - One word of caution, use the regular cleaning cycle first (you can do this even after the modification).  Otherwise there might be a lot of smoke which will adversely flavor the Pizza.