building an oven

[mram50]

Hello..I am on the verge of building my first stoves/ovens with the rocket stove method, but I ran across an old oven that is a built in type model and as i was disassembling it for scrap and sheet metal I noticed the center box is a self contained box with a door and had been insulated with some type of wool/fiberglass type material. The entire thing appears to be stamped steel with a hinged door and i was wondering if there is a way to adapt this square box to use as an oven for baking or whatever? It's basically a standard sized oven box you might find in any modern kitchen less all the rest of the junk around it. I stripped off all the wiring and all that's left is the box itself, the shelves, door and the old heating element.
So if i constructed another box to go around would I need to insulate between them or would I need to leave that area open to allow hot air to circulate around the box?
I've seen diagrams for the Dr. Winiarski rocket stove bread oven weblife.org/capturing_heat/ and it uses two cut up barrels, but this one is square and obviously wouldn't fit inside a barrel, but i have it in my mind this thing could be well adapted for use.
Any suggestions?
Thanks
Marty

[Donkey]

You would want the hot air to circulate around the box. Insulate outside all that, don't insulate the box from the fire.

I bet that you could even out baking temps if you placed some kind of thermal mass around the box, then circulate heated gas around that.. It would likely take longer to heat up, but it would stay hot longer and the heat would tend to be more even..

[mram50]

So by thermal mass you mean something like brick or ceramic tile perhaps then circulate the heat around that?

[Donkey]

I was thinking high sand cob with no straw, but yeah.. tile, brick maybe though it could be a little too light. Anything heavy that can stand a lot of heat.
I like the cob option, 'cause you can form or sculpt it into any shape.

[mram50]

I know it's not the same, but my mind always thinks of corn cobs when the term cob is used. I see what you mean though..
I'm also working on a normal, every day stove without the oven and have run across some chimney flue and it's lined with aluminum. I assume that would just melt down if used as the heat riser?

[Donkey]

Yep.. I fully expect that aluminum would melt.
Wouldn't go there if I were you.