I'm on my sixth "break in" fire, but 3 out 6 of them have gotten hotter than they were supposed to. I'm shooting for 500 on this one, but after taking a looong time to climb to 500, next thing I know it's shot right up to 600, so I'm letting it die down. This has happened on my attempts for 200 and 400 although I eventually had success at those. I barely know if there's any point to me trying to maintain 500 since the temperature has already exceeded that several times. I'm hoping I haven't F'd the stove up, but it seems to be doing fine.... The temperatures sneaking up that high may have something to do with my 40 ft chimney and me getting distracted for 10 minutes right when it decides to take off!