30 Gallon RF

[love2flymn]

Hey guys,

I'm fairly new to the site. I have been browsing these forums for a few months now, and last weekend I finally found myself a couple tanks. I got a ~350 gallon and a 30 gallon. I've been PMing back and forth with Clover Ridge Smokers a bit and he recommended I do the patio build first.

So, I will just get down to what I've got.

14.5" dia tank by 40" length. Is this too small? I measured a frozen whole chicken and it was 5"Tall x 9"Long so it will fit but will it be too tight?

For my firebox I'm going to just chop the tank and make the firebox from the drop piece.
I did some pit calculations. I did it based on cylindrical shape instead of volume. 28"x14.5"dia CC with a 12"x14.5"dia FB gives me a ratio of 128%. I know this is high but I think if I go any smaller I would have to just make it from plate steel, which I don't have at this time and I would rather not have to go that route.

Throat size calculated out to be ~15sq in. If I did my math correctly, this would be a 5.5" dia throat. 3" dia chimney @ 14" long. Do I not want the throat dia and chimney dia the same size or is the chimney supposed to be a bottleneck?

I'll do a sketch up of what I'm thinking as far as the door design and whatnot and I will take a picture of the tank and try to post it from my phone.

Thanks guys!

[love2flymn]

Here are the pics

[SmokinFF]

Looks like you're on the right track. Let's start makin smoke.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[love2flymn]

Progress so far

[Gizmo]

That there string/paint idea is great!

[Clover Ridge Smokers]

Good job Jesse. Glad to see you got started today.

[bluecatfish]

Good start. I built a RF patio smoker out of a piece of 14" x 36" pipe, CC 14" x 24". FB 14" x 12" out of the pipe. It is great for smoking a brisket, or a rack of ribs, or a pork butt or 2 or 3 chickens. The little patio smoker you are building will serve you well until you decide to build the 350 gallon job. Looking forward to watching the build.

[love2flymn]

Yeah I have been doing shoulders and whole chickens on my cheap charcoal grill just doing indirect heat. They come out great but it's a PITA to try to keep teh temp down with it. I'm really lookiing forward to this RF for those types of cooking.

As I told Clover, I'm going to draw up some different plans for the 350 gal tank. It's a bit larger than what I need so I'm going to try to figure out how to get two RF's out of the one tank. One of hte reasons for that is I did the FB calculations and it was huge... I really don't want to spend THAT much on a giant cooker I won't really use much.

More pics coming later from my progress tonight. I got the ports all cut out so far. About to go cut my FB chunk off right now.

[love2flymn]

Made some progress tonight.
Unfortunately I'm at a bit of a standstill now until I get some steel plate

[Clover Ridge Smokers]

[Rodcrafter]

Your doing great!

[love2flymn]

Time to start working on this again.

Do I want my grate to be flattened expanded or just regular exp? It's an extra $35 for the flattened and I'm going that route if possible. Also, is it reasonable for a 5'x9' sheet to be $60 and/or a fl exp 5'x9' to be $95? Talking 3/4" x 9. Thanks!

[love2flymn]

Actually 3/4" x 9 5x8 $58 and 5x10 flattened is $98. Fork over the extra for flattened?

[Gizmo]

I've always used flattened because it is much easier to clean with a scraper.

[love2flymn]

Another question I have is that I have a piece of an old tank. Not sure the radius of the steel but it's 1/4" thick so I can't straighten it out. I was thinking I could use the curved piece for the baffle plate and it would be like a convex lens wtih the focal point being on the food. Think this will work? I'll sketch a pic in a bit and post it.

[love2flymn]

Bad picture but you can get the idea.

[Gizmo]

Radiant heat like we work with in these smokers won't focus the way you are referring to.
I'm guessing from your drawing you would end up with a hotter grate in the center stripe and cooler edges - but that's just a hiunch….

On the bright side though - you would be channeling your cooking grease to the center so a center drain would work well.

[Puff]

From my recollections, guys go out of their way to eliminate these kinds of conditions with shadow plates and the like. While worth the experiment, the results may not necessarily be encouraging.

As Gizmo says...just a hunch

[love2flymn]

Well maybe I'll try to straighten the steel out. I think it would actually be more hot around the edges due to heat rising (with the exception of heat coming right from fb). Thinking I'll just give it a go and if I don't like it I just have to build a new smoker!

Picked up my materials last night. Will be starting construction tonight.

[love2flymn]

One other question. How clean do you guys get the inside? Bare metal or just wire wheel?

[Clover Ridge Smokers]

Bare metal is your friend

[Rev.Mike]

[love2flymn]

Thanks guys.

[love2flymn]

So originally I was going to use a sq fb door but it would have to be 9" to allow 1/2" flange around it. This is way too small. I would like a removable basket. Now I think I'm just going to build some support off the side of the fb and have the whole end open. Anyone ever done this or have an opinion on it?

[Gizmo]

Opening the whole end is fine.

The 3 most important things about a FB door:

1) It has to seal well - if it doesn't then you aren't controlling the draft air properly.
2) It can't be allowed to warp.
3) It's really nice if the door/jamb design has a lip-free floor completely out the door opening so you can easily drag out ash/coals into a dust pan or bucket etc. for cleaning. A feature you will curse endlessly if you don't have it.