new member and build,got a question

[RAAAID]

[Dirtytires]

All right.....it is unanimous. That is the coolest steering we have ever seen. I, as do the others, hope that you will share some of the details and maybe a fear more pictures.

As far as insulation, I put an inch of ceramic insulation on outside of my firebox and skinned it with 10g.

Rest looks great.....

[RAAAID]

thanks. ill try to get some better close ups of it tomorrow. its pretty simple and it has some decent turning radius. a lot of it was fabbed up with common size steel stock. the only part that was a bonus was the golf cart spindles,that saved me a bunch of work but im sure it wouldn't take much to make up a set of spindles.

[Pete Mazz]

Very nice!!!

[Squiggle]

[The Czar]

I like it!!!

[Frank_Cox]

Awesome!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk

[Rodcrafter]

Yep, sweet setup


Making memories.

[Big T]

[RAAAID]

finally got a chance to fire up the smoker today and season it. started it with a bed of charcoal coals in the basket and then added some applewood I have. managed to kind of get the temp under control but I only ran it for about 3 hours. tried to see how hot I can get it and had it climb to 300 but decided to back it off. did my heat adjustments with the firebox damper (don't have one on the stack and not sure if I should,any thoughts?) opened the doors up for half a minute just to see how fast the heat would recover. didn't take long at all to get it back to 230-250. about 5-10 minutes.

couple of questions

1 how hot should this smoker be able to get at its max? (is it like a bbq with burners cranked reaching near 500, just curious)
2 how often should I add wood to maintain a certain heat? (I know all smokers are different but just looking for a general idea)

thanks

[Dirtytires]

I'm probably not the most qualified, but here is my experience.

I have a damper on my stack. To me, the only purpose is to keep rain/dirt out. It is always wide open when I cook. All tamp control is with my air dampers on the firebox.

How hot can you get it? I suppose my question back is why would you need to get 500 degrees? Some people drop an ash pan in the cook chamber to cook burgers and such so higher temps are possible if you want. I would be careful using you firebox to heat the chamber that high as you could/will get warping (on firebox) as it is always much hotter than the cooking chamber. Unless you have a 1/2inch plus plate firebox, I would be avoid it. In conclusion, if you want 500 degrees, use your bbq.

I fire my current rig with charcoal and then feed it sticks for smoke. Even if I do nothing to it, I find checking it every 45-60 min is ideal. For my set up, the key is small adjustments to get it/keep it to proper temp. If mine gets too far off track and large adjustments are necessary, my pit gets real unhappy.

[RAAAID]

just curious about the max temp. I just thought that the smoker would reach higher temps easier. it was fairly easy to maintain my cook chamber temp at 230-250. I just thought I was gonna have issues with the temp getting over 300 , that's the only reason I was asking what the max temp would be.

[Dirtytires]

Again, I'm not the expert, but your natural "temp range" is determined by the throat size. Most smokers, if designed properly will want to stay in the 225 range as that is the definition of smoking. If you want to go higher, you need to open up the firebox to cook chamber opening. Some people will build their pits with a slightly larger opening then fine tune them by slowly welding block plates to get the right temp range.

You firebox will get as hot as you want it but that heat can only get into the cook chamber one way. Building a bigger fire won't necessarily allow more heat to get thru that opening.

[RAAAID]

ok makes sense. I used the calculator to figure out my dimensions so I guess if im having no issues yet keeping it within temp then im good. im still new to this so I just assumed it would get a lot hotter then 250 . thanks for the info

[Dirtytires]

250 is perfect.....it means you did everything right. The last thing you want is to have a smoker where you fight the temp constantly.

[Rodcrafter]

I would agree you want it to run at whatever temp you set it at without a lot of tending to it. I make my throat larger than required then use a damper because of my rig having separate CCs. So if I'm only using 1 of them I can close her off some and only heat the 1st one. There are many ways to do this stuff but the goal for smoking is low and slow.

jm2cw