Sorry for the late response. Thoughts and prayers to you my brother. Pour your love for her into your build and dedicate it to her. Everytime you cook she will give the love right back to you.
I finally had the heart to start working on my smoker again. The passing of my wife has really been rough. Got the fire basket, and ash pan built. Also installed the temperature gauges. I think I will build a work shelf on the end and a place for storage under the CC. Then I will do a test burn.
Got the work shelf on back and storage underneath done. Built a fire in it and burned it out. Was happy with the way it came up to temp and was easy to hold, but I didn't like the temp difference from end to end, about a 44-50 degree on FB end of CC. Added a 9" wide shadow plate and temp difference went down to 10-15 degrees. Added 3" to shadow plate today and will test it on my next cook. After I put the 9" shadow plate in I did the biscuit test and as expected the FB end browned quicker, but not too much so. I smoked a small beef arm roast for 4 1/2 hours and also smoked and cooked some potatoes and jalapeno poppers. Cooked that on the hot end. It all turned out good. Happy with the way it runs. Will put some black paint on it after a few cooks to see if I want to make any changes.
Learning generally boils down to "Repetition or the avoidance of pain", some people learn by doing, some by watching and some just have to pee on the electric fence.
Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right. Henry Ford
Sorry about no pictures. For some reason I couldn't get them reduced in size enough to attach. Thanks for the comments, you guys have been a great help.