Smoker build

[Redneck]

nice tradesman ship hurry up an show off the grill skills.

[THEFERMANATOR]

Well it's about time to go get some wood, and fire her up. Got it all finished up tonight except for cleaning and painting which will happen after the 1st fire is lit in it to burn off any residue on it.

It's hard to make out, but you can see my diverter in the upper right to redirect the smoke out to the side. Had to add this on after I did some checking and seen where the smoke would be hitting under the back porch.


And the 2nd cooking rack installed. Got it setup so it can be removed fairly easily, and tilted up while cooking to access the meats on the lower rack easier.

[Destroyer]

Awesome!!!

[THEFERMANATOR]

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.


Decided to put the 1st coat of paint down on it while she was burning in.


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.


Sure is a pretty glow coming out of the firebox at night.


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.

[willy]

Very nice my friend, going to be some nice meals coming out of that smoker

[bradford]

Looks great Ferm!

[THEFERMANATOR]

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.