Cracks with smoke coming from them

[ross]

Hi

I had the same thing before insulation - I ground down with grinder back too brick and recovered the area with fire cement - I also got into the oven and repointed the top of the dome..

Touch wood it seems ok - Ive heard somewhere on the forum that the tubes of firelcay ( in a pump disensor ) are good when the crack is at its widest fill it..

see thread http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/f8/c...over-4843.html (crack in top of over)

Ken gave me some sound advice

[oventhusiast]

My oven works great, cracks and all! As you heard, they all crack. it's just about the size of those cracks that matter. I used this furnace cement on them before I insulated. (see pic) That cracked slightly afterwards but no smoke or flame coming form them. I then covered the dome with a small layer of heat stop (refractory cement) to hold everything together. It worked ok but I still got some hairline cracks in that and I personally wouldn't recommend a thick layer over the dome because I feel it adds a bit too much to the thermal mass. Which takes a bit more wood and time to get it up to temps. Don't worry too much about it! Gotta Go, I'm heating up my oven as we speak!
Rick

[dusty]

Mine, of cource, cracked too. I put a diamond tipped masonary blade on my angle grinder and, from the outside, I ran the blade over the small cracks as to have a wider gap to fill with mortar. I then used a grout bag to inject the refmix into the groves I cut. This worked fine on the small cracks.

I had two that were bigger - like 1/8 inch or more. For those I again used the angle grinder with blade and cleaned them up so they were uniform in gap. I again sqirted refmix in them but then tapped firebrick wedges in the cracks. This also seemed to do the trick.

Problem was I then had to repair the inside. Wedge tapping left unsightly cracks on the inside. They didn't leak smoke, but looked bad.
Here, I just grout bagged and rubbed mortar into the cracks with my spong.

I waited 6 months and many firings before I started ANY of this.
Hope this helps. Lots of work but I am now crack-free.

dusty