My understanding is that putting the throat higher and then deflecting straight up in the cc as dacolson has done is supposed to afford you less loss of main grate real estate.SheffSmoker wrote: ↑January 7th, 2022, 8:15 amOn my 3rd build now, and I've put them all as low as possible, and the FB as low as possible to match. I want the radiant heat from the fire as far away from the food as I can. They all work as they are supposed to, I think some of the commercial pit builders are trying to fix what ain't broke.
I think that's one of the keys to that design. Enough space for the air to rise and start swirling before exiting the fb.Brewmaster wrote: ↑January 7th, 2022, 7:49 amat least when combined with the massively over-sized firebox.
When first built, the beginning 4" of cook rack was way hotter than the rest, after some experimenting with both a downward and upward deflector I added a very rudimentary upward deflector and now it's just the first inch or two that's hotter. Don't mind that though as I use it for crisping chicken up.ThinBlue wrote: ↑January 7th, 2022, 9:18 amMy understanding is that putting the throat higher and then deflecting straight up in the cc as dacolson has done is supposed to afford you less loss of main grate real estate.SheffSmoker wrote: ↑January 7th, 2022, 8:15 amOn my 3rd build now, and I've put them all as low as possible, and the FB as low as possible to match. I want the radiant heat from the fire as far away from the food as I can. They all work as they are supposed to, I think some of the commercial pit builders are trying to fix what ain't broke.
When you build your with the throat at the bottom about how many inches do you sacrifice to a hot spot?
I agree. You would think they'd spend a couple minutes after it's built and at least take a hand scraper and a broom to it to. They go for about $1k less than similarly sized pits on the market so I think a lot of folks just accept it.SheffSmoker wrote: ↑January 7th, 2022, 8:15 am
After watching that video I can't believe they are asking 3 grand for something still full of manufacturing crap! I wouldn't sleep at night knowing I'd sent out something like that.
I've seen a few other users videos of Workhorse setup and seasoning but that's the only one I've seen or heard mention of any scale left on. Seems pretty odd.ThinBlue wrote: ↑January 7th, 2022, 2:06 pmI agree. You would think they'd spend a couple minutes after it's built and at least take a hand scraper and a broom to it to. They go for about $1k less than similarly sized pits on the market so I think a lot of folks just accept it.SheffSmoker wrote: ↑January 7th, 2022, 8:15 am
After watching that video I can't believe they are asking 3 grand for something still full of manufacturing crap! I wouldn't sleep at night knowing I'd sent out something like that.
For sure!ThinBlue wrote: ↑January 7th, 2022, 9:48 amI think that's one of the keys to that design. Enough space for the air to rise and start swirling before exiting the fb.Brewmaster wrote: ↑January 7th, 2022, 7:49 amat least when combined with the massively over-sized firebox.
I'm pretty sure that firebox is 27" long. The few times we've cooked on one of these we tried to keep the fire pretty much as close to the door as possible. My thinking is that the whole mass won't be as hot when it enters the cook chamber, making it generally more even-tempered throughout, so to speak. Haven't really had enough time on the cooker to figure out if it might work better or worse with the fire shoved in a bit further though, common sense tells me the closer the fire is to the throat entry, the hotter it'll be, but that could be ass backwards with the ambient air ingress.ThinBlue wrote: ↑January 7th, 2022, 9:48 amAround 4:10 in this video you can see the the smoke is naturally exiting in a swirling motion roughly parallel to the throat opening. The fire is also probably 6-8" away from the door opening. What I'm concluding from that is for their design to work as intended they needed to give the pit master at least a 6-8" air gap between fire and throat in order for it to work as intended. So, just doing the quick math, if they thought someone would use a 16" split + 6" air gap to the throat + at least 2" from the fb door then you have a minimum fb of 24-26" for that design to run properly. Or I could have, and probably did, ccompletely overthink all of it.
https://youtu.be/vvcuR-iWo6I
This.I think some of the commercial pit builders are trying to fix what ain't broke.