New guy, 1st smoker build

[Rodcrafter]

Cool


Making memories.

[THEFERMANATOR]

Got the new thermometer in, and got Christmas hams going. My suspicion of my old thermometer was correct, at 225 now i have a nice gentle sizzle in the water pan instead of a boil, and i barely crack the vent to hold 225 now. will find out in a few hours the results.

[Tom_Heath]

It's amazing what an accurate thermo will do.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Rodcrafter]

Yep that is for sure


Making memories.

[Puff]

ESPECIALLY, it 's all about temperature. Breaking down collagen in the meat...when it will stop taking on smoke, etc, etc. while crediting the old ways as a footstep up, new science and technology can help to insure repeatable performance. If one of those cooking sessions is so good you would like to get it done again, just read the notes you make on your thermometers

[THEFERMANATOR]

Still having some trouble getting this thing up to temp. Today is a cool rainy day with a fair amount of wind, and I have had to fight this thing all day to keep it up to 225. One thing I still notice is when I open the lid, the smoke clears up alot and turns from grey back to a blueish color. I'm thinking my 3.5" chimney isn't big enough to flow the hot air out. Also when I cleaned it out this morning, I noticed a fair amount of ash falling out of the chimney pipe which also makes me think it is a choke point. I'm probably going to swap it out for 4", but was wanting to know if those who have built pits before think I'm going in the right direction. It still cooks good, but it is smoking quite a bit more than I think it should be, and it is tough to get it up to temp. After I lcose the lid within about 30 seconds or so, the smoke will go back to a greyish white color which also re enforces my thought of the chimney pipe being to small.

[Rodcrafter]

First the inside dimension of the stack is what we measure. It looks like the pipe is smaller than 3.5" in the pictures, not trying to question your tape measure at all. The next thing that I guess is that because of the changing directions of the heat/smoke is causing turbulence then the fact your stack is low in the CC causes more turbulence. I think it would serve you well to use twice the recommend stack dims. I would take the old one off and do a test with the larger one just tack it in place. The fact it's cold outside is not helping you. But you're not letting it get rained on right? These things don't run right until the shell gets hot.

jm2cw

[THEFERMANATOR]

It's under a cover, so no rain is hitting it. I know if I open the firebox door and get a good fire burning, flame will come out the front of the door. If I open the CC door, most of the flame stays inside the firebox. My current chiney pipe is 3.3" ID, and roughly 36" tall. The calculator said I should go for 38", but 36" is what I had. I also still need to make a better smoke outlet for my porch. I know I'm getting a little restriction through the 6" pipe I have layed over it to direct the smoke out from under the roof, but I plan on going with a straight up outlet out the roof with a screened rain guard over it to keep rain from coming back in. It also didn't help that the smoke blows out to the west, and the wind was out of the west to northwest today.

It still turned out some good food tonight though. Made a chicken, pork loin, slab of baby backs, and a small brisket.
Baby backs on and cooking.
Brisket finished.

[Big T]

I agree with RC, I think you need a larger I.D. stack. The pit calculator doesn't take into account the extra U-turn that the heat is having to make with the design of your pit. I would make a bigger stack with an adjustable damper and see what happens from there.

[THEFERMANATOR]

I'm going to see if the local driveshaft shop has some 4.5" tubing. I have ap iece of 4" ID, but it is 1/4" wall tubing and one heavy piece. I really don't want to have that kind of weight hanging off the top of it. I looked at some pics of a similiar sized LANG smoker, and I see they have a lot larger diamter chimney pipe than I have on mine. Now I can kick myself in the but because I 2nd guessed putting that 3.5" tube in for the chimney, but the calculator said it should work so I went with it.

[Abauer]

Great looking build! Reminds me of my in progress build.

[Rodcrafter]

I wonder how long the calc says this 3.3 pipe should have been since it said the 3.5 was supposed to be 38" and you only used 36". I'm not being difficult I'm really curious how many cubic inches short it is. You might be surprised.

[THEFERMANATOR]

I wonder how long the calc says this 3.3 pipe should have been since it said the 3.5 was supposed to be 38" and you only used 36". I'm not being difficult I'm really curious how many cubic inches short it is. You might be surprised.

The actual ID of my chimney pipe is 3.334"(it's an old 3.5" steel driveshaft out of my SUBURBAN I twisted, and decided to find a use for the old section of tube). I reran it through the calculator, and it says it should be 37.13" tall, but I only had 36.5" of pipe left, so thats what I used.

[Rodcrafter]

So it must be the direction changes causing the issue. I still think draft could solve it maybe Frank could shed some light on it if not, since he is the HVAC guy.

[THEFERMANATOR]

Picked up a piece of 4" schedule 10 pipe today(actual ID is 4.3"), so later on this week I will swap it out and retry it. Guess I can use it as another excuse to fire up the smoker. And on another note, I have found my new favorite smoker meat. I threw in a piece of pork loin with my last cook(the end that is dark and white meat), and it has become my new favorite. I injected it with my apple juice based injection, and coated it down with my sweet rub, and I would say it is as good as the brisket I made(but ALOT cheaper).

[THEFERMANATOR]

I got my 3.3" ID chiney pipe swapped out for a 4.3" ID pipe. I also added on an adjusteable damper to it. Seems to be doing a bit better now, and not choking back so easily. Another thing I found is my supposed top of the line thermometer is WAY off in temp. My 1st burn in after swapping the chimney pipe I got it up to 400 on the gauge, but I put my digital temp probe in it and found it was almost 500 inside at the thermometer. The thermometer stalls out in the 200-225 range and goes from reading higher than actual to lower than actual right in the sweet spot for smoking temps. When it's 75 degrees, it shows 100, but when it shows 300 it was actually 375. So I have to get another thermometer for it. After moving it back to my porch, I added in a roof top vent pipe setup so the chimney outlet now goes straight up instead of through a 90 and out into the wind. It's a VERY windy day today, and all the exhaust seems to be going straight up and out. Will find out here in a little while how it all does together as I'm doing my 1st cured meats. Got some whole pork loins, put in a brown sugar honey cure for 5 days at 40 degrees, and got em in the smoker now hoping to make some canadian bacon.

Heres the smoker on the porch, and you can see I have the 4.5" OD chimney pipe going tinto a 6" furnace pipe, and finally up into a 8" outlet with rain cap.


Also built me a wood rack so I can dry my smoking wood somewhere than my back porch taking up space.


And finally, anybody with a nice smoker needs a log splitter to split up your smokin wood so you can get em how you want em.

[Rodcrafter]

Sounds like you're getting this stuff headed your way now. Congrats, I built a log splitter right after I built my larger smoker.

[Big T]

A faulty thermometer can cause you a headache, glad to hear you got it figured out.

[THEFERMANATOR]

Heres todays cook. I cured it for 5 days at 40 degrees in a brown sugar honey cure, and it came out pretty good.

[THEFERMANATOR]

A faulty thermometer can cause you a headache, glad to hear you got it figured out.

I have another thermometer I stuck in the chimney pipe to watch the outlet smoke temps, and am setting it mostly off of that one now. I found at around 220-240 smoke temp at the chimney outlet has it cooking pretty good, and clean.

Sounds like you're getting this stuff headed your way now. Congrats, I built a log splitter right after I built my larger smoker.

3 of us chipped in on this one, and I got it in almost new condition for $635 so it wasn't really worth building one when a pump and cylinder was going to cost me almost that.

[Big T]

[Puff]

My log splitter is a very big and has a monster 2 1/2" cylinder shaft. I was going to buy some stock length hydraulic hoses and decided to go custom length. That was almost $275.00. I know my great grand children might be using this splitter BUT You can't debate that YOUR economic strategy works!

[THEFERMANATOR]

It's taken me a little time, but I think I'm finally getting the hang of this thing. I was having alot of trouble with the top rack turning everything real dark and getting done alot quicker than the bottom rack. I decided to try less wood in my firebox so I could run the vent open a bit more, and it seems to have evened out my temps and keeps the top rack from getting so dark. I kept trying to figure out why I was getting so much smoke, until it dawned on me to use less wood. With my old smoker I had to pack the firebox to keep it up to temp, but not this one. Every 30 minutes or so I add a small split and keep the coals leveled out, and it seems to have straightened itself out. Knowing what I know now, I wish I would have just trimmed my old 3 1/2" stack pipe to the top instead of having it protrude in, and called it a day. With my current setup I can get it up over 700 degrees to burn everything out of it, but close the damper back and drop her right down to 215-225. Live and learn for the next one I guess.