Well... I have been MIA for a little while as I have moved to Kansas City from Central IL. Started a new job here January 8th and can't believe school is out this week. The smoker is still in Illinois as I don't have room for it here yet.
I have some updates to this smoker and need a little advice.
So when I did another test run I ran into a new issue. But I think it might be caused by something I need to finish first.
So the FB door does not have a latch yet so when the inside of the door starts getting hot it starts to warp. So I know I need to clamp the hell out of this door to keep it in place. Then The area between the FB Door and the dampers warped a little too making the dampers inoperable. I hope that if I start clamping the door down that it will help with the middle section warping or I might need to redo a little on the dampers or give them more play?
Does this sound reasonable or do I need to make some drastic changes?
Everything else went as planned when doing my last test run up until it was time to start closing down the dampers. It took about an hour to come up to temp and the warming cabinet never got above 85 degrees since there is 3.5 inches of insulation between the FB and WC.
With this smoker being 6 hours from my house it has not gotten a lot of attention. Well I made two trips back to Illinois to finish it and it turned out great. Couldn't be more happy. 1 day finishing fabrication. 1 day sand blasting and lots of wire wheel grinding to prep for paint. 1 day painting. 1 day cooking 5 briskets, 8 shoulders, 16 lb sausage and 2 pans of smoked beans and I was happy. I'm driving back to KC so I will upload a YouTube video later for consumption.
Unfortunately it's still in IL. I do have my smaller 120 gallon smoker on the 4x8 trailer here in KC. I have two events in IL this year already booked so it's nice to have a smoker in each state.
I made a video explaining the smoker and showing it in action. I love the chamber doors as they have no latches. They simply stay shut by friction. After the first use I would not change a thing.