Does your door leak heat/smoke?

[kebwi]

Still designing a door. As my curing fires have approached full capacity, I've built a temporary door by wrapping my masonite/two-by-four arch form in heavy foil. I even stuck my 1000F thermometer through it to see what kinds of settled, contained temps I get after killing my curing fires and sealing up the oven (photos forthcoming in my build thread).

Anyway, this door is pretty shoddy, and I admit it. The foil is kind of lumpy, thus preventing a good flat seal, and the door isn't very carefully jammed up against the reveal as I hope to achieve with a folding leg of some sort on the final door. I'm hold it in place fairly tightly with a brick, but it isn't really leaning or being pushed heavily against the reveal. That combined with the lumpy foil has resulted in obvious leakage. There is visible smoke drifting out the top of the door.

Which leads to my question, to people who have built final doors of higher quality than my interim door. Without a soft seal of some sort (thermal rope for example), does your door seal well or do you get obvious leakage in the form of smoke? I would imagine that metal and brick can't seal very effectively since neither is soft enough to conform to the subtle imperfections of the construction. Is this a warranted concern? To do good long term baking, do we really need a well-sealed door?

Thanks.

[dusty]

kebwi,
My door leaks smoke when I am smoking something, but I don't worry about it to much. My door is two inches thick and full of FB board for insulation. I am happy with the way it holds heat in the oven. I bought a length of fiberglass rope gasket but I have never installed it.

dusty

[Les]

Keith,

I have a metal door. Smoke is not an issue because when it is needed, the fire is out. You will find that you will need to leave it open to cool the thing down to temps you can bake in (unless you need to bake at 700+ deg.). You will get a finite window to cook in, but that is the challenge. Finding the meals to cook in the drop temp zone is all the fun. This has been my experience - maybe someone else has another view.

Les...

[kebwi]

@Les: I wasn't worried about "losing" smoke per se, only that it was an indicator of heat loss, i.e., an indicator of air escaping the oven. Clearly, for baking, I will clean the oven out so there won't be any smoke anyway.

Thanks for the input guys.

Cheers!

[david s]

I've heard a traditional Italian method was to soak newspaper in water and stuff it all around the top and sides of the door for a seal. I use a tiny sliver of wood, placed under the bottom of the door to make it sit firmly against the oven opening, so it's sealing al the way around. Seems to work well. You can lose a lot of heat from a tiny gap.