Dave here. I have been smoking meat since 2008. My first smoker was a Brinkmann Smoke N Pit which I modified with a baffle, tuning plates, dual thermometers, chimney extension to the grate and charcoal basket. I also purchased a propane burner for it from GasSmoker.com because I really couldn't get a handle on fire management and was very frustrated. Later on I built a UDS then in a few months I built another UDS. I have done most of my cooking on those for the last several years and have primarily used the SnP for jerky, fish, Canadian bacon, and cheese with an Amazen tray. Ribs, pork shoulders, briskets, chicken, tri tips, etc have all been cooked on the UDS.
Recently I had the opportunity to play with fire in a coworker's large fabbed smoker and really enjoyed it. I watched tons of fire management videos and played with the SnP a bit with just some lump and really small splits. That was fun too and worked out better than I thought it would. So I decided I wanted a stick burner.
Well my wife about went into shock when I mentioned the pricing. So I figured maybe I can build one. Except I don't know how to weld. And I have no shop. But I work at a high school. And they have a metal shop class And they look for projects to do this time of year. So I chatted with the instructor and he said they could absolutely build a smoker for me. I will pay for materials with the understanding that they can take to to the county fair this summer and enter it. Sounded like an awesome deal to me.
So that's what brings me here. I picked up a 60ish x 20 air compressor tank off of craigslist for $65. It appears to be every bit of 1/4" thick but we have not cut into it yet. The plan is to cut it down to 48" long and build a 48x20 reverse flow. I have run the numbers in the calculators and have the general sizes. I will decide on exact numbers when I find out the exact ID of the tank and rerun the numbers.
I'm sure I'll have a lot of questions along the way.
