My first MOD

[sassy's]

I bought a char-broil vertical smoker from wal-mart. The price was right at $125 and seemed like a vertical is what I wanted at the time. The downfall was that it was propane. Don't get me wrong, propane is good smoke too, but it can't be used in KCBS events. I found this out at one of my local events, my second comp actually. There were three guys there that had been doing competitions for quite awhile, i am assuming this by the amount of plaques and trophies that they were displaying. I was immediately intimidated and thought " what the heck am I doing here?" Turns out these guys are very good guys and want more competition in the area so they briefed me on some KCBS rules and some of the competition background. I made life long friends that day. That competition was a rib only day and I ended up winning people's choice and placing third over-all ( missed second by one lousy point because I had no idea how to present my meat in a box, with a little help I may have gotten first.) The three competition guys got a second place a fourth and a fifth. I ended up placing higher than two of them, but still felt like it was cheating since I used propane. I knew that in three weeks there was another competition near by and that they all would be there so I immediately began my first mod. A friend had an American Gourmet smoker he said he would give me and it was charcoal. Having never seen it before and not getting a very good description I said heck yeah ill take it. After seeing it I realized that it was way to small. You could probably get a turkey inside it, but it had better be a small one. WOW, what was I going to do with this mini smoker now? After about ten minutes I stripped the propane guts out of my smoker, cut a hole in the front of the mini for a charcoal door, added a few grates to the bottom of the mini to hold my coal, put in a wood shelf and screwed my vertical cabinet to the top of the mini. I basically stacked them and converted the mini smoker into a firebox. I have since named it "Frankenstein." Amazingly enough this worked great. I still had a water pan in the top cabinet, the wood smoldered and didn't burn, and the food tasted great. The major problem that I ran into was room. I could only get 6 racks of ribs and a chicken in there and constantly needed to move my shelves around for even cooking. I ended up by a char-broil offset smoker which I had been eyeing for a long time, but that sucker leaks so bad it pained me. I put some fireplace gasket around the bottom to seal it up, but the first time I closed the lid on it, it all fell off. I got some new gasket cement and have to give that a try. I am also going to add a charcoal "box" inside the fire box and a stoker. The charcoal box will be so that the charcoals stay off the bottom and I can blast all the surface area of the coals with air. Now the off set isn't big enough and looks amateur to me, so I bought a 300 gallon fuel tank and will begin my first build as soon as I get that tank cleaned out.

[Frank_Cox]

One of the greatest things in life is that you could win a competition or even get a call with a homemade, hodge podged smoker against the big shots! I mean, people Win all the time using drums and stuff. That is just awesome!

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[Tom_Heath]

Welcome to the site, glad you found us.

Like Franks said, you dont have to be cooking on a new rig with sparkles on it. Drums trashcans and everything can cook great with a little love.

Hang out, check out some of the post and see if you can find a style you like. Some folks are creative and handy some are not. Either way, if ya get in a jam or get stuck on ideas, we are getting a pretty decent variety of smoke plans if needed.

I would love to watch your build progress. I'm kinda sad right now since I don't really have the time to work on my latest build ideas.

[Gizmo]

Sas that's exactly the kind of deviant behavior I love to read about here in this site! Makes me feel right at home. My first comp was a steak cookoff - took 4th out of about 20 contestants with a walmart $9 ball grill - now I'm working on edgar for a team of 7 of us - all with the "bug for Q" - that's where it's really at...

[sassy's]

That reminds me Edna's kid. At the first cook-off my beef category was steak, very simple just with my own rub. As I sat there all day and watched all of these expensive grills roll in and get setup I kept laughing inside because of my ace in the hole. People would ask me what I was doing and they kept asking if I was smoking my steak and I replied no i'm going to grill it. Well, where is our grill was the common response. I told them I would break it out about 10mins before judging. When the time came I put my $6 Wal-mart grill (charcoals included) on my table and grilled some steaks. You would not believe the looks I got from these guys who were expecting something a little more like theirs. I have never laughed so hard, especially when I got a call and they didn't. It's not the size of the grill in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the grill.

[Frank_Cox]

Well said!

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[Tom_Heath]

OMG !!! Thats Awesome.

I think I may have to try something like that next year.

[Gizmo]

Classic! - Man wins smoker cook-off with disposable grill! Poetic justice... it warms the heart.