SmokerBuilder.com

You can significantly decrease your cook time if you tightly wrap (I use butcher paper) as soon as you hit the stall. But yea, not starting till 3pm will result in a late cook either way.... Yeah I was thinking more like 8 p.m it was just me and the wife becuase the kids off for vacation so I wasn'...

I forgot to mention my water pan is sitting where the bottom rack is supposed to be. I found that aluminum pot at goodwill and it was the perfect size to sit in the perfect spot. I was only going to use the bottom rack for meatloaf so now I'll probably just run it without a water pan if I do meatloa...

We had our first cook! But before I go there we ground the paint off and painted her. 60 grit flap wheel after loosening the paint with oven cleaner. Cleaned up with acetone, hit it with self etching primer and then rust-oleum 2000 degree paint. Paint job turned out pretty sharp for not spending muc...

I did a lot of work tweaking and filling to get the doors to seal perfectly. The latches help as the draw the door in tightly.

No exhaust damper just intake. In the next burn I'm going to burn lump coal since I'm released from quarantine now. I've always had better luck with lump coal.

Quick update. At midnight just before bed the temp had dropped to 270. So 5 hours it pretty good for a set and forget cook time This morning temp was still around 80 and upon check there were a few straggler coals in the basket still slowly burning up. I plans to give it a solid degreasing and clean...

Finished the fire basket, intake damper, and mounted temp gauges. I didn't install the water pan rack but it's been raining for days and I was ancy to try it out so I fired her for her first burn ! All I can say is I'm extremely happy with the outcome of this already. I had covid last week so I was ...

Hopefully I'll be looking next weekend. Should finish the fire box today as well as the intake damper. Should be able to to do it first burn this week and get her painted by the weekend.

Well its been a bit since I made some updates.
Crazy cold weather and being busy in the shop put the smoker on the back burner.

But today I got the latches installed, the grates installed and started working on the fire box.

I like the press to adjust the doors, we typically always see a chain and bottle jack. Definitely like the press as it’s is a bunch safer and more controllable. I can definitely see more people doing this in the future....thanks for sharing. Yeah definitely safer. I don't know what I would do witho...

If your fire basket isn't the full height of the FB door then you can add some short legs to the bottom of the basket with flat plate on it. You'd be surprised at how much ash they'll hold. An opening in the bottom will also work but it needs to be air tight or it can cause issues with controlling ...

Looks like a solid setup. Will the ash sit in the bottom of the firebox or are you making some sort of ash pan? Seems difficult given the air intake coming up through the bottom middle. The intake will no longer be underneath. It will be in the door. The bottom of the tank will catch the ash. With ...

Okay so the coal basket is going to be framed in angle iron. The rest will be expanded steel. Nothing new there. One thing I plan to do though is have some steel wire or rod on the front and back side for handles to make it easy to load and unload. The other thing I wanted to do was have the basket ...

Cole Leffert wrote: ↑

October 6th, 2020, 12:52 pm

Looks good! What is all in there besides the meat?

Limes are what we added. There are several ways that Al pastor is made. Chilli marinade and pineapple typically.

Dirtytires wrote: ↑

October 6th, 2020, 10:18 am

You making burritos?

Tacos. Cook up the meat and then I throw on some green peppers with muenster cheese . Bunch of tortillas and go to town.

If building these smokers was easy, no one who own a pellet grill lol. And I fully agree on the taking a step away from a project. You get consumed i the same thoughts until you break that cycle. Waking away makes the AH-HA moment reslly kick in. Definitely did that building up my Xterra offroader ...

Well I took the top door off and pressed it into shape. Welded it back on and it fits almost perfectly. The bottom door in the other hand seemed to fit but once I out the gaskets in started to run into some issues. So I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and cut the words and to the same thing ...

Okay well I'm back out in the shop with a fresh mind and I've started at the smoker and had my coffee while I pondered. I'm going to cut the top door back off. (Hinges are just tacked) and I'm going to stick it in my press and try to untwist it once and for all. These doors have really ate up most o...

Great progress. Are those welds on the inside of your door flanges hitting the inside edges of the door cutouts? Nah. It's just fusion welded so no filler. It's very small plus the gasket space it fits perfectly. Great idea with the fusion weld. Never crossed my mind. Thanks for sharing. Yeah with ...

Looking great! I also like how you did the hinges! Gives it a real clean look! Thanks. I did good up on the hinges. When I did it originally I put the hinges on so that the moving part was on the tank and not the door so it wouldn't rub as it opened and closed. When I put it together the second tim...

dacolson wrote: ↑

October 17th, 2020, 11:47 pm

Great progress. Are those welds on the inside of your door flanges hitting the inside edges of the door cutouts?

Nah. It's just fusion welded so no filler. It's very small plus the gasket space it fits perfectly.

Heating season kicked off to a bang so I've been fixing other people's fireboxes instead of building this one. But today I hit it hard and got a lot of the time consuming stuff done. I welded all the door seal edge or stop on. I welded the legs in completely, I welded the exhaust on completely. Then...

Nice work! Heating s ason is off to a busy start so I've not had time to finish my build but I'm hitting it hard this weekend. Keep up the good work.

Nice plan. If you look at my build it's very similar to what your building. Maybe a touch smaller. I'm doing a 3" exhaust.

Made some progress after a long day at work tonight. Tacked my legs on and the exhaust. I didn't do it in any of the cook ays mentioned before. I just kinda wung it. Like I had said before this is kind of a break from what I typically do in the shop so I'm trying to keep it simple and easy. Worked o...