Oven Exterior hot to the touch

[tmarsala]

Chris-

Thanks! I will (and am).

By the way, what max temp do you personally fire to? Do you think there is a "too hot"? I tend to max out at about 1200-1300 before I start cooling. That is about 2.5 hours of fire-not too huge of a fire, either, mind you. Do you think that is too hot? I could blame my looses brick on that, but the oven really stays hot well through the week when I saturate it like that.

Thoughts?

Tom

[SCChris]

I use a Harbor Freight IR thermometer to check my temps and unfortuately it doesn't read beyond 1K or so. I don't think you need to push it to those levels to cook and have a few days to spare.. If you well insulated with a good fitting door you should be able to stay cooking for many days. A tip I picked up was when you're done cooking and down about 250 or so, put your next starting load of wood into the oven to dry. This works like a charm for minimizing the smoke and lighting right up.

Chris