Miles wrote:The plates I welded under the top of my tank did solve the issue of the top grate being hotter than the bottom grate, made no difference to the smoke.
Get a couple 55 gallon drums and make your own charcoal...Miles wrote:Thanks for those replies.
Of course I meant 490 degrees not 4900.
When you say the heat is from the bed of coals do you mean coals from wood or the bed of charcoal?
I have two charcoal burners that work great, but I want to use only wood in this smoker. Not even one briquette of charcoal.
I used to buy Kingsford, 20 pounds for less than ten bucks. Then the price started climbing. 10, 12 13 bucks for 20 pounds. Then the size of the bags started getting smaller, $14 for 18 pounds then $16. Then the bags went to 16 pounds. Now, at the only store I can get them on the Island, they are $14.95 plus 5% fed sales tax and another 7% provincial sales tax for only 11 Pounds of charcoal. If I do a 15 hour burn to cook up a couple of briskets and a shoulder or two it costs about 35-40 bucks just for fuel. I'd rather spend that on ribs.
That's why I found this site and built my reverse flow, I wanted to use wood only and my other smokers are geared for charcoal only with just a few chunks of wood for the smoke and flavour. I read about stick smokers and assumed that's all that was used, sticks. Am I wrong here or are there guys who use wood only?
Once again, thank you for your help.
Al
Never occurred to me until I read this thread. My friend now runs a professional catering business. He had 55 gallon barrels with a huge whole big enough for a shovel of coals to removed cut into the bottom-side of each barrel and simply had drilled holes for cris-cross re bar. He'd throw logs in there and as the coals dropped, he'd shovel them over to his BBQ pit made of cinder-blocks.Squiggle wrote:That's what I'm doing, I'm half way through making a charcoal retort kiln now. Hopefully it will save a few dollars.