Frank & the HQ boys should be able to help out with the sizes, but I know that Rodcrafter has put a GF unit on his RF so he should be able to tell you how effective it is.
Definitely going to be an interesting build. Look forward to pics etc.
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
Well, I don't want to give too much away right now about my plans, but I will show you what I have done so far... This is not going to be your typical smoker...
Is there a way to get Rodcrafters attention? Id love to see his RF gravity feed. I will go stalking through the member list and see if I can find some photos :-D
Pete.
Last edited by PetesMeat on April 3rd, 2017, 4:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
Oh it hasn't been that long since I was on the site fellas. I do have to do some correcting though. Squiggle said I have an GF on my RF. But the GF is on the vertical part of the rig above the FB of the RF. Yes it is different but quite amazing. Now there was a guy that did put a large GF burner in the firebox of an offset. It used a lot of fuel but he did say it worked. The GF burner works great, but to make it fuel friendly you really need insulation and the thinner inside skin helps too as you don't have to heat the large mass of steel. I know this is not what you want to hear but, if you turned it on end and put square doors on it you would probably get better results.
But don't let me mess with your plans.
jm2cw
Current Smokers: Backyard RF Offset and Hybrid RF Offset trailer rig with Cowboy cooker and fish fryer, always room for more........
Well i'm not too worried about it being fuel efficient. If I want to be fuel efficient, I have a UDS here I can use. This smoker is going to be interesting, and weird and unusual, and if it eats more fuel, so what, il just keep feeding it. I won't use it that often anyway.
My main worry is that it wont work at all, more than it using too much fuel. Just the burner not getting hot enough is my concern. How big do you think the burner should be Rodcrafter?
Looks pretty good dude, I'm thinking you'll need some sort of transfer tube/baffle where the GF unit enters the CC, this will help dissipate the heat & even out the temp in the CC(kind of like a cross between an insulated GF cabinet & an RF style).
Yes, going to fabtricate some kind of tube thing to duct the heat into the chamber, and will have a shaddow plate above it to stop a hot spot on the baffle.
It will be a centre feed, I have a centre feed already that works very well. I don't want to do an offset because of the way the doors open on this smoker.
I already have a pit controller, I built it myself using cheap bits of electronics off amazon. It can hold temp inside my UDS within 1 degree F for hours on end. I will possibly need a bigger fan for this gravity feed, but thats no problem.
I have ordered the steel for the base, and im shopping around to get the best price on the laser cutting for the door hinge.
Next step is get the base made and get the tank sitting on the base so its at a nice height to work on, then do the flappy door ends, and then start on the burner.
I have no idea what diameter and height to make the exhaust, so im going to have to kind of wing that, and make them removable so i can change the length after. Upright cabinets don't really have exhausts so I got nothign to base it on. I need a chimney obviously to create the draft effect, but I just dont know how long...
I am wondering if the chimney size is directly related to the air intake size?!
Ok, i was toing to go for two stacks and have the ends turned away, as I have in my centre feed, I think it looks cool and I would like to establish a consistency between them, kind of a signature design feature for all my smokers :-D
The pipe i use is 75mm stainless steel tube, 3 inches. Maybe i could use 2 inch for this one but id rather use 3, looks better.....
Photo of my centre feed and its shiny exhausts is attached...
Thing is with that, the firebox is not a traditional firebox at all, its a lot smaller than a normal firebox would be, so the firebox, according to pitcalc, should be about 6000 cu inch, but instead its 1700, because its a gravity feed, so does that mean the stack should the the size that it would be for a 6000cu in firebox, or should it be the size it should be for the actual size of the firebox?! Its confusing, this gravity feed is a bit of unchartered territory for home builders, especially when its not in a cabinet, so hopefully i can work it out and help others build them.
When the blower isn't on it needs to draw like a normal smoker. It's not a vertical so I don't think it'll draw like one. The heat and smoke still have to travel around the BP, as well as the small size of the intake, which requires some pulling power. If the blower is on all the time the stack can be any length you want.
If it's tourist season, how come I can't shoot 'em?
Well I have made a bit of progress. I got the steel for the chute and tacked it up today.
The steel for the chute is 5mm thick, and its four strips 250mm wide and 1250mm high. This means the finished chute is 1250mm high and 250mm square (thats about 10 inch square and about four foot high i think). The opening is 100mm (4 inch) high.
Its insanely heavy, and this is just the chute. I think its gonna take about 6-7 5kg bags of charcoal once its done. I was worried about the thing not getting hot enough, im not worried about that anymore....!
Nice. Good strong work.
Interesting bits of steel with the dogbone pattern cut in you have in the pic with the mallet lying on the steel. Just curious as to what those are for and they appear way too neat for plasma so presume they were laser or waterjet cut.
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
Ahh, they are not steel. They are PVC antistatic floor tiles. I have a clean electronics assembly lab in the same building and I just laid a floor made of those tiles (you use the mallet to bang the dog bone jigsaw teeth together). The offcuts are turning out to be rather useful...!!