Pizza Oven Catering Trailer

[Redneck Teepee]

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Neat project KC, your buddy is quite the talented fabricator for sure. I do have a question to feed my curiosity on the rotating plate rollers which appear to be fixed and squared with the trailer frame work.

Should they have not been installed with the axle(s) centerlines pointed in corresponding protracting tangents, directly through the centerline of the table center pin so to limit the surface area of multiple direction motions at different speeds on the wheel/plate surface(s)?

I also may not be getting the whole finished assembly picture in my mind. Larry Great Job!

[KCStudly]

You got it right, they are all, in fact, arranged with the shoulder bolt axles aiming at the center of the flange bearing. Some of the pictures just aren't clear enough to see it. Take another look at this pic. Compare the pair of rollers on the two xmbrs that are close together on the left with the two that are on the forward xmbr on the right.

[Redneck Teepee]

Yes... another picture angle shows all. Interesting note on the shear in the background of this picture, it appears to be of the same manufacture and era of the one we have in our shop, without looking to confirm (I think) it's a Cincinnati built in 1935, 10' bed and will shear up to 3/16" Stainless Steel a real work horse 80 years later. The only problem in 25 years since we have owned it is had one of the hydraulic hold down cylinders leak, found a good rebuilt one back east, and then had a local machinist rebuild the old one for a spare.


Again a slam dunk on the pizza oven. Larry

[KCStudly]

I think Karl said the shear was from the 50's, but also said that the basic design has not changed much over it's life. I believe they're still making them. Yup, it'll do 1/4 x 10 ft steel, and yup, many of the hold down cylinders leak. Karl bought a set of 6 off of an 8 ft shear that a guy was parting out on flea-bay. Those were leakers, too, so he is having them rebuilt to swap in. They want something ridiculous like over $2k apiece for replacements.

There are two varieties, inertia (flywheel) or hydraulic. This one is inertia so it can cycle continuously at a higher rate of cut than a hydraulic unit. The other day I watched Karl cut up a 10 ft long strip of 1/8 inch x 1 inch wide into 3 inch long tabs; hold your foot on the pedal, start shoving and out they come in a steady stream... ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk.

[Redneck Teepee]

Ours is flywheel also, and they are work horses. I think we paid in the range of $1200 for our spare cylinder about 15 years ago and got the old one rebuilt for about the $300 range if my memory serves me right. The only real maintenance is adjusting/replacing the shear knives, we have a fellow that come's in and takes care of that when needed, and he say's it should go for another 80 years with proper maintenance. I told him it just has to out last me and my brother

[capnTelescope]

Very cool project! Thanks for sharing. I'd love to see it finished. I'll bet it gets a better than average paint job.

Here's to Karl!

[KCStudly]

Yes, here's to Karl. What they were able to accomplish in such a short time frame was truly impressive.

Karl said it towed really nice on the way down to the GC's facility.

He filled me in on some of the finishing details and has some more pics on his phone that he will get to me eventually (hint, hint, Karl). They weighed the trailer and it came in at 2500 lbs dry. They weighed the rotisserie with oven attached separately and it was 4000 lbs, the rotisserie wasn't even close to 500 lbs, so the oven must have been a bit more than the advertised 3500 lbs. That puts the total dry weight at 6500 lbs leaving 500 lbs margin for cargo.

Karl had been slightly worried about being able to align the rotisserie shaft with the flange bearing, and how difficult it might be to lower it into the bearing using multiple fork trucks; but said that in the end it went pretty well because the bearing had some misalignment capability and was able to articulate in the flange enough that things went smoothly. Just a little shuffling between trucks to switch between the single fork truck with taller extension forks, to the two trucks with thinner tapered std forks to keep from marring the SS deck as they lowered it.

From the pics the paint job came out nice, matching the factory black paint on the customer's tow rig.

The oven has to be heat cycled a few times at different temperatures to cure the refractory and ensure it doesn't crack later, so the client took the rig with him to do that, but Karl will have another chance for some more pics when it comes back to finish up the sinks and a couple of other knock list items.