Building a wood fired oven "Breaking in"

So now that the bricks are on and have cured for 1 week it's time to heat up the oven take care of a few things.

I removed the spacers between the brick base and the hearth slab

 This worked really well by the way

Next I kicked out the cats (they were pretty bummed out about the eviction)

Next we light the fire

The plan here is to keep the oven at a low temperature 200-400 F  for about 24 hours

to drive off water in the masonry layers. Then fire it for real a couple of times to see what is going to happen before we close it up in the final enclosure (and cook some food)

We have a pool going on what the outcome will be.

I say the brick work cracks slightly as the steel shell expands, and then stays that way pretty much forever. A second school of thought is that steam builds up between the steel and masonry and sends bricks flying. A third theory holds that the bricks get moved out every time the oven gets heated up and the bricks eventually fall off. Time will tell. I invite anyone interested to place your prediction via the comments section and we will see who gets bragging rights in the end. I will be updating this over the next few days to let you know what is going on.