One thing that I have going for me is that I love smoked meat! Another thing that I have going on here is that I am a welder fabricator/ sheet metal worker with a full home shop including a CNC plasma cutter, welders etc. but have zero working knowledge of how to properly size, build, or even use a smoker until I fumbled on this amazing site. Man I am glad I found it . I didn't know, or even think that these things were actually engineered to individual tank sizes and that the area of the smoke stack was important. I have a newfound respect for pit builders!
I recently changed out my H2o heater and am using the old tank to do a small build for home use (horizontal configuration). I figured I'd work out the kinks on this one, then sell it and make one that I can be proud of later
> I have tons of metal and can and will fabricate ALL of my parts here in my home shop except for temp gauges etc.. I read last night that the baffle plate in a "reverse flow" smoker needs to be welded solid. I then noticed that in an "offset smoker" the tuning plates just lay in and can be moved around to (apparently) fine tune where the heat is going on the cook grate. , so the grease on an offset smoker would likely be drained from the bottom of the tank. Here is my conundrum/question: I was planning on laying "my" baffle plate across two angle iron tracks which would be welded inside of the tank and along the length of the smoker. These tip up and form a trough, due to the shape of the tank and the location of the angles along the lower radius of the tank. I could then remove the baffle plate and drop in a pan which would sit on short legs off of the bottom of the tank so that I could use briquettes/wood in order to cook up burgers for the kids in it when I don't want to fire up the fire box. Then simply remove the ash from the pan and set it aside and drop in the baffle plate.
I clam shelled the lid so that it can swing fully out of the way and will build crank arms and cables so that I can lift the cook grate above the heat and fire in the tank when I am using the tank as the heat source and cooking up stuff that I may not want to smoke. So the question is: Can I simply lay in the correct size baffle plate, similar to the way tuning plates set in an "offset smoker"? Not too worried about grease fires on this small thing and would deal with a drain as needed. I would rely on the weight of the pan/baffle plate to set snugly on the angle iron rails.
I really liked the pit calculator, so THANK YOU to whoever is responsible for it. I am following it to a tee. I have my tank and have things moving along smoothly. Last night I burned hubs for my all metal carriage wheels and rolled up some flat bar and welded it to the hubs. Thanks for reading my post. I am thoroughly enjoying this forum …
Regards,
Tinspark -
