Hello all!

[JRPizza]

No leakage - I stuffed the rope in the horizontal gap and used a little high temp caulk (I bought to go around the adapter plate) just to hold it in. My vent draws very well - have had a little smoke out the front when the wind is really blowing and the chimney isn't hot, but otherwise it pulls fine and I'm not sure I "really" needed any gasket but it's good to have.
As far as red brick goes, the upper portion of rear vent arch gets pretty hot so you need to decide if you want to expose red bricks to that much heat. I think some builders have done it. I kind of wish I had, as my vent and chimney are firebrick and I put too much work into making them look acceptable to want to cover them, but would have liked them to have that red brick look. Still might put a facing on the outer vent arch, but have been enjoying cooking and catching up on all the projects that got neglected while I was building the oven.

[david s]

You can reduce the depth by setting the flue pipe slightly behind the oven mouth. Mine has a 5" flue yet the flue gallery is only 5" deep. This is easy to design if casting, but very difficult or nigh on impossible if building in brick.

[patjer1]

If you use a thermal break and isolate everything with the CF blanket, also the thermal break, then I think that the oven can expand "freely"? But what if there's vermiculite in everything? Will it crack at the thermal break or does the blanket compensates the expansion underneath it?
So better to have a vent as short als possible?
I think Octoforno uses a larger but lower decorative arch, maybe this is good to prevent smoke out of the front of the oven?

Goodnight!(over here)

[JRPizza]

My vent opening ended up being around 6.5 inches when I completed my arches, so as I built the chimney up I expanded the opening rearward to get it to 8" wide. This allowed me to keep the landing depth to 1.5 bricks and still have an 8X8 opening for my adapter plate.