Smoker build

Got a chance today to pop her cherry, and lit the 1st fire in her. It sure takes alot more wood than I thought it would to get it hot, but I could get it up to 300 on my temp gauge with the water pan about half full. Unfortunately my temp gauge must be reading way low though(more on that later).

1st fire lit in her.
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Decided to put the 1st coat of paint down on it while she was burning in.
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And I couldn't resist the urge to cook something on it. Found a pack of chicken breasts in the deep freezer, promptly thawed em out and slapped em on her.
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Sure is a pretty glow coming out of the firebox at night.
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Still have a few things to finish up on her, but all and all pretty happy. 1st order of business is a GOOD thermometer. I was cooking the breasts around 225-250 on it, but they cooked in under an hour and half and were over done in that time. 2nd is I need to add a heat deflector inside just above the halfway mark because I found a cold spot in the cooker. When I put the breasts in, I put one in each corner of the cookign area, and judged how they were cooking to jusge the temp. The lower left side cooked quite a bit slower with less smoke than the other 3 zones did. Hopefully a deflector will take care of this. 3rd, going to add a post on the side of it to hold a crescent wrench for taking the water fill plug out with, and removing the water drain plug. 4th going to add a tube to hold the wooden prop rod I made for the 2nd shelf. And lastly put another coat of paint on it.
 
Does this count as a truckload? I'm just not physically able to split wood with a splitting maul anymore. I ended up cutting most of it with a chainsaw, and only split some of the laurel oak I had. Then again, live oak is harder to split than concrete. To those who haven't had the pleasure of trying to split it, your lucky. I REALLY need to find a log splitter, but I don't have the funds right now for a new one, so I'll keep watching craigslist and wait for something to turn up. And hopefully I don't have another guy do me like yesterday where he promised to hold it for me until I got there as I was driving 25 miles to come look at it, and he calls me when I was less than 2 miles from his house and said he just sold it. I was less than thrilled to say the least.

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Ferm, I split and sold firewood for a few years and you aren't kidding about the live oak..I used to say it was like trying to split an anvil. Especially if it was 300 year old stuff. I actually charged 25% more for it, but eventually just quit messing with it it was so hard and so much extra work. I use a 27 ton splitter. Red oak and water oak is where it's at for firewood if you ask me. Now I loan out my splitter to close friends and neighbors and get any wood I want for free.
 
I have laurel oak, live oak, and some blackjack oak, but mostly(probably 90%) live oak in my wood pile. It's a good heavy long burning wood with a mild flavor for smoking(little salty, but not bad at all), but man is it hard to split. Guys up north have it easy with there wood from what I have heard and read. Theres a 35 ton log splitter for sale as well, but the guy is hem hawing around and I don't know if he really wants to sell it or not. He's been telling me since Monday it's 150 miles away and he's going to pick it up that night, but here I am Friday and he still hasn't even got pictures of it, let alone got it some where where I can go look at it. Or theres a few smaller ones that they want $850 for, the kicker is I can buy a brand new one of the same model for $950 at TSC. Don't really want to spend the money, but it might be cheaper than $100 for a load of wood that won't last but 3 or 4 smokes.
 
Well, I got her finished out and going to try her out for awhile before I make anymore changes. My thermometer is supposed to be in Monday, but other than that all I didn't do was add the baffle. I decided to hold off on that and I'm going to try adding on an extension to the chimney to bring it down furthur first and see what that does. I'll make it adjusteable so I can move it to allow all of the smoke to go in through the bottom, or part through the bottom and part through the joint. I also added in some toggle clamps to hold the center of the lid down because it was bowing out when hot, added on a hanger for my crescent wrench, and put a piece of tubing in to hold my prop rod for the 2nd shelf.

I did run into a problem with it today though. The 1st time I lit it off it took me over an hour to get it up to 300, and today it took me forever to get it up over 200. As soon as I opened the lid the firebox lit off(I could hear it flame up), and it got HOT in a hurry. So I took my mailbox off the top of the chimney to direct the smoke out, and she went to blazing. So I found an old section of 6" furnace vent pipe with an adjusteable 90 on it, and screwed it to my roof for now to get me by. I got 3 slabs of ribs, and 10 pounds of leg quarters on her now, so I had to come up with a quick fix. She's holding a nice 200-225 now with the vent barely cracked open.

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I can't believe the difference taking that mailbox looking elbow off and going to the heater duct made. It now can hold any reasoneable temp no problem, heats up pretty quickly, and uses ALOT less wood. I used probably half the wood today VS what I did Wednesday, and held better more consistent temps. I didn't have to pack the firebox this time and keep the vent full open. I was cursing it thinking I needed a bigger chimney pipe for it, but it ended up being my own fault. Live and learn.

My impressions with cooking on it for the 1st real cook is it is an AWESOME cooker. It would have taken me 4-5 hours to cook ribs until they were done in my old BRINKMAN, but 2.5 hours in this one and they were already getting tender. I used VERY little wood after I fixxed the chimney problem, but I do have to remember to add another chunk every 30-45 minutes to keep the smoke going uniform(this is probably more to do with my wood not being really dry yet. It's 4 years old, and still damp after I cut it up). The water pan not being in direct contact with the heat worked out nicely. Even after 3.5 hours it still had a good deal of water left in the pan, but it stayed very humid inside the smoker. Only downside to this design isn't a deal breaker, but it does make it a bit uncomfortable. Having the firebox underneath the cooker sure helps to re-use the heat and keep it compact, but it does make it warm on my right leg when I go into the smoker. Alot of heat radiates off of the door when you have a good fire going in it. But all in all I'm VERY happy with my smoker, and like my unique design. Time to do some hams for Christmas.

Tonights grub.
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I have to say this is one impressive smoker build. Good job Ferm. You did one heck of a job. Appreciate you sharing this with us.

BIG thumbs up from Lexington, NC!!!!!! :party:
 
Got the new thermometer in, and got Christmas hams going. My suspicion of my old thermometer was correct, at 225 now i have a nice gentle sizzle in the water pan instead of a boil, and I barely crack the vent to hold 225 now. will find out in a few hours the results.
 
Did another cook yesterday, and had some problems keeping the smoker up to temp. It was a cold(by Florida standard), rainy, windy day yesterday, and I went through quite a bit of wood, put out alot more smoke than I thought I should have, and had trouble keeping it up to the 225 mark. So I'm going to make a few small mods to the smoker to try and help it out. I did some testing on it while cooking, and found if I opened the door on the firebox, smoke and flames would come out, if I opened the lid most of the smoek and flames would go back up through the smoker, and the smoke would clear up and it would burn nice again. Close the firebox door and it would keep burning, but if I closed the lid, the fire would go out and the smoek would come back after about 30 seconds. So I'm thinking my 3.3" ID chimney pipe just isn't large enough to flow the heat out of the smoker, and am on the lookout for a piece of 1 inch bigger pipe to make my chimney out of. I can hold a good fire in the box with the lid open, but closed it won't hold heat. Also I'm going to add in an exhaust pipe to the roof of my overhang for the smoek to go out instead of my current 90.

Even with the troubles I ran into yesterday, I still managed to turn out some decent food. Cooked a whoel chicken, a pork loin, a slab of baby backs for prego, and a brisket.

baby backs as they went on.
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The brisket before cooking, during, and done.
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Try insulating your chimney.... Hot gasses draft much better.... An insulated clue pipe would slide right over the existing pipe or could replace it if you like
 
I got my 3.3" ID chiney pipe swapped out for a 4.3" ID pipe. I also added on an adjusteable damper to it. Seems to be doing a bit better now, and not choking back so easily. Another thing I found is my supposed top of the line thermometer is WAY off in temp. My 1st burn in after swapping the chimney pipe I got it up to 400 on the gauge, but I put my digital temp probe in it and found it was almost 500 inside at the thermometer. The thermometer stalls out in the 200-225 range and goes from reading higher than actual to lower than actual right in the sweet spot for smoking temps. When it's 75 degrees, it shows 100, but when it shows 300 it was actually 375. So I have to get another thermometer for it. After moving it back to my porch, I added in a roof top vent pipe setup so the chimney outlet now goes straight up instead of through a 90 and out into the wind. It's a VERY windy day today, and all the exhaust seems to be going straight up and out. Will find out here in a little while how it all does together as I'm doing my 1st cured meats. Got some whole pork loins, put in a brown sugar honey cure for 5 days at 40 degrees, and got em in the smoker now hoping to make some canadian bacon.

Heres the smoker on the porch, and you can see I have the 4.5" OD chimney pipe going tinto a 6" furnace pipe, and finally up into a 8" outlet with rain cap.
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Also built me a wood rack so I can dry my smoking wood somewhere than my back porch taking up space.
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And finally, anybody with a nice smoker needs a log splitter to split up your smokin wood so you can get em how you want em.
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