Oven Curing Firing Your Oven Discuss Oven Curing in the Oven Management forums; Last night’s burn went different than I had anticipated, not bad just different. I started the burn at 6:30 and ...

[SCChris]

Last night’s burn went different than I had anticipated, not bad just different. I started the burn at 6:30 and gave it an hour of gentle flame, less than full throttle, before I opened things up full. At 8:00 I was approaching 360 at 9:30 I was 370 in some places and at 11 I was about the same although the temps were more consistent. It’s at this point I decided that I could settle in for a few hours, and did. I woke at 3:30 and went to check temps, holy $#1+, I was 410 throughout, and 210 on the top outside ½ of the dome, 180 on the soldiers. I decided that it was time to shut things down and take stock in the morning. The interior temps are now about 260 and the exterior top is down to 170. No cracks that I can see so far. I still need to do a real visual of the interior and exterior without the loose bats, but these will wait till things cool more. The 210 temp says to me that I was pushing steam, I didn’t see any, but the temp and broad distribution of this temp says that this is what was going on. The chimney stack was cool and the top of the interior entry arch was over 530. Today's work is to get a building frame in place. With weather coming and the need to organize the semi-rigid insulation, at least to the point where I can continue curing. I'm a bit suprised that the burner is able to push temps to 400+ without formal, taylored, insulation.

Chris

[ThisOldGarageNJ]

Hi Chris,,
As your driving the moisture out, you can see its building heat,, Thats great..

Cheers
Mark

[SCChris]

On further inspection, no heat related cracking has been found. On Sunday I ran to Lowes and gathered steel studs and channel for the surround and I now have a steel box frame built 38” high around the dome. The next task is to apply ½ inch thick Hardie Backer to the sides and back of the steel and block structure. This weekend, I'll line the interior of this outside wall with unfaced fiberglass insulation; this insulation will support the rockwool, RW, bats. I’ll use these RW bats directly against the dome. I have 3, 4 cuft, bags of vermiculite to fill in what holes I can't easily get RW or FG insulation into. I’ll be using all these materials to level out the insulation within the box. I'll be leaving some space around the insulation, next to the studs, to provide air movement and hopefully minimize humidity that would chew up the steel framing. Before I do a final pack on the insulation and dump the vermiculite I want to get the curing fires done and get the OMG fire behind me. This weekend I push forward with 500 and 600 degree burns and begin using wood rather than LP.

Sorry I don’t have any pictures, I’ll add some soon.

Chris

[jmhepworth]

Everything sounds good.

Joe

[SCChris]

Last night I started the burn at 5:30PM and just finished at 2:00PM 20.5 hours and a max temp of 540 degrees. I now have cement board surounding the oven and this is gong to help to get the maximum amount of insulation within this structure.

Tonight I'll run another long burn and figure that I'm 95% there as far as curing. I know the cure instruction indicate run a sieries of long burns ending at about where I now am at, but I want one more long high temp burn and a 2 or 3 carefull, non temp shocking, wood burns ending in the OMG 800 to 900 degree burn. So I guess I have 3 or so more burns to the oven being ready for anything.

Chris

[SCChris]

No more fires since Oct. 31st, :-( but I have the structure insulated top to bottom, front to back and left to right. The roof structure is coming along and I hope to get the box water tight this weekend.

Chris