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Opps! I was fitting up the plates for the ash box and noticed something was not right. I have the joints the wrong way on the firebox. The long sides should be _inside_ the short sides. I guess that's why I only tack welded them, right? I'll cut the tacks and correct this, other than that I'm ready ...

el salchichero on the west side of Santa Cruz
http://www.elsalchichero.com/

Nice place, but a bit spendy sometimes.

I spent the morning running to the meat market (got some nice looking beef plate "short" ribs), getting groceries, and getting the beans and pork belly on the Traeger. It died last week and I had to replace the auger motor. It's working again, although it seems to be running a little cooler than it ...

Rodcrafter wrote:It is funny how we come up with the things we do for ideas.

"Engineering by Emulating"

Ah, didn't think about them. They're just south of town. How are you going to cut the sheetmetal? First time I've bought there. They were super nice and the cheapest of the quotes I got (which is not to say it was cheap!). They actually gave me the 16 gauge CR sheet for the same price as HR. I need...

I was thinking that 6" was enough for a pork butt, maybe I need to go measure more meat. For reference, these are the two most comparable Stumps smokers. Some of the bigger ones have larger rack spacing. Baby, 3 shelves spaced at 3.5" (look wider in the photos though?) XL Baby, 4 racks spaced 5" apa...

No, at El Camino Machine & Welding. Really nice place, nice guys. Looks like they have a huge stock of metal.
http://www.elcaminomachine.net/index.html

OK, trigger pulled. I drove down to Salinas today and bought every bit of steel I need to build this (except for the 1/2" plate that I already had). 80' of tubing, angle, 1/4" plate, etc, etc. I got three 4' x 10' sheets of 16 gauge. This thing is going to weigh a lot. I'm thinking about stretching ...

I'm in northern California, near Santa Cruz. SF Bay Area.

Great weather. Great car scene. Expensive steel, apparently.

$357 sounds like a great deal to me, congratulations! All of my quotes (I have 5 now) are $760 to over $1,000. The cheapest quote without any sheetmetal is still over $400. I guess that's the price I pay for living where I do...

So why does that matter? Cold rolled will release all that stress when heated (as in a smoker or grill!), thus it'll warp far more than hot rolled. It can be a really ugly surprise. 4-Barrel To me the biggest considerations around CR vs HR are: 1. Cost, CR is often twice the cost of HR stock. As a ...

Actually the price for the 16ga cold rolled sheet is OK. The 1/4" plate is outrageous. Good suggestion on buying 10" wide HR flat stock. That would be a lot easier to handle anyway.

I got another steel quote today. Holy Shit, this is the highest so far. The sawing/shearing charges are more than I would have guessed, but even if you remove them it's still more money than I want to spend on steel. The only bit that seems pricy in particular is the 1/4" plate. Note that since I ha...

Wow, that seems like a great price.

Great suggestion on fitting the doors to the case. Steel moves an amazing amount when you weld it (at least when *I* weld it )

If you're watching for it, you can use the next weld to help correct the pull from the last one.

Looking ahead I have two questions on the build. For now. 1. The cap for the smokestack. Is it expected to need to throttle the temperature using the smokestack cap, or is that just to keep rain out? If it's just a rain guard I might replace it with a rain cap instead. 2. The gasket material that is...

Just pulled a brisket off the smoker (3 speed Traeger). A bit over 17 hours to get it done. I'm excited because I haven't made a brisket that was right yet, I think this one is going to be good. I checked it by probing with a toothpick along the flat until it was tender. It rode 2.5 hours at 205 int...

Frank, I hate to be the one to raise my hand in class but you lost me on shorting the corner ... Puff, if you cut two of the sides 1/2" short in length, but mock it up to the correct dimensions, you will have a "V" at the corners formed by the ends of the adjacent parts. That gives you a nice troug...

(I probably won't get much more done this weekend, it's 90 degrees outside, and I'm watching a brisket that's *almost* done)

Hi Frank -- yep, copy that. I was going to short them 1/4", but decided to make them the full lengths and grind a bevel instead. I ground a 45 degree bevel 1/4" back on the front and back plates. https://mcglynnonmaking.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/img_3062.jpg Clamped up to tack the first joint, the...

is that band saw a special metal saw? Hi Puff, yes it's a WWII era DoAll metal cutting saw. It's kind of a beast. But before this I had a 14" wood/metal saw. For you saw you need to slow the blade WAY down with either a gear reduction box or an intermediate shaft with different sized pulleys on it....

a shower of sand rains down in your eyes

I *hate* working on cars that actually drive

I'm still shopping for steel to build the Mini Gravity-Fed smoker from Frank's plans...initial quotes are higher than I like, but I had some half inch plate already so I thought I'd cut it up to make the firebox today. First, two hours of cleaning up the shop. My son has been using it and wasn't aro...

Those bends ... Do you do those there? I have a bender, but those are pre-bent with an internal mandrel so they stay consistent. I use them to build headers and exhaust for the Studebaker. And a couple of chopper exhaust tubes. The bender does a great job on thicker wall tubing like 1/8" wall stuff...

Puff, something like that might help. I've carried 14" lengths of wood in my bed, tailgate up, strapped down, and that's a little dicy. A rack that extended over the cab would be the hot ticket I guess, but for the 3 or 4 times a year I need to deal with long material it's not worth it. I just spent...