Differences in oven thermometers?

Posted by John K

I am now at a point where I am about to pour the hearth slab on my oven. For the final oven I would certainly like to be able to read temperatures before starting cooking (I just like these numbers....). Putting in thermocouples sounds like a lot of work and is going to cost quite a bit, and be quite a bit of work. The infrared thermometers look to be quite easy to use and are really quite inexpensive.

So my question relates to how much, if anything, I would be gaining by implanting the thermocouples. I know that they would read temperatures within the firebricks, but I don't know how much more that would tell me beyond what I would get from a reading of the surface temperatures.

Any thoughts on this would be much appreciated.