My wood oven is cracked….now what?

You’ve dreamed. You’ve planned. You’ve built and now you’re finally able to start your drying fire.

Wait a minute….what is that? Is it? No! It can’t be cracking!   The mortar was perfect! The bricks were cut precisely and tightly fitted. This can’t be happening!   Oh no….is this thing going to fail! I’m going to have to rebuild it?!  My [ insert significant other here ] is going to kill me!  All those weekends wasted!

Sound familiar?  Guess what, I’ve been through that process too!

As you experinced builders may already know, all that stress and worry was

for nothing, and you’ve been using your oven for years now.  Only that now, after suffering through all the anxiety and stress that your labor of love has been ruined, do you understand an important truth about oven building.

They all crack.

 

 

Now sometimes, on rare occasions, something does go wrong with a build and the cracking is structural, which means a rebuild is inevitable.  But that scenario is a rare occurrence and usually a structural failure is caused by trying to short cut a step or two.  I have seen and consulted on lots of builds and when I say rare, I mean like 1 oven in 100 has problems that warrant a complete tear down.

Something I’ve learned over the years is that oven building is pretty forgiving. I mean, it’s pretty hard to build an oven that is a complete failure.  Of course there are always improvements that can be made to any build and certain basic guidelines to stick to as you complete each step.  All the information is out there to help you with questions.

As always, feel free to leave a comment or join our Facebook group, where there are many experienced builders with a wealth of knowledge and an eagerness to help you succeed with your project.

So if you see cracks as you’re drying the oven masonry, try not to worry.  Remember that you’ve done your homework and taken the time to build this thing right.  Clear the ceiling and start using that oven!