500 gal revers smoker.

[buckhunter88]

hi all i,m new to the forum.  i,m building a 500 gal reverse flow smoker out of a propane tank, and have found alot of good ideas. just cant find door size and what thickness for the heat plate. can anyone help with this. also would 2 or 3 doors be better.

 

[radioguy]

Hey Buckhunter,

Welcome to SMF.  This is the right place to get your smoker build done the right way.  Some pictures, dimensions would be helpful. 

Thickness of the RF plate is usually recommended at 1/4", but this depends upon your budget, material availability.    The thicker it

is the longer pre-heat time is, but your temp fluctuations will be less.  Make sense?  More material is more thermal mass.  As

far as door recommendations, a lot of that depends upon personal preference.   Will you be cooking butts, brisket, chicken? or whole hogs?

Wider doors are better for larger cuts. 

Hope this helps out. 

RG

 

[buckhunter88]

ribs / brisket/ beercan chicken  ... 

 

[nwbhoss]

Make sure to not make the same mistakes I made on mine. Use the calculator on this site to get the right size fire box for your cook chamber and the right size opening between the fire box and cook chamber. I tried to go the easy way and use a big freestanding wood stove I was given and the fire box volume of it was less than half of what I needed and the 8" opening for the chimney pipe was way too small as well. I am redoing my entire firebox correctly (I hope) now so that it will be as efficient as possible 

Good luck with your build and by the way I went with 2 doors on mine and they will need good sized counter weights because they are heavy! I plan on cooking up to 1/2 a pig and lots of briskets and or pork butts so I wanted bigger doors. 

 

[nwbhoss]

Here is a picture of my two door 500 gallon tank

 

[smokin peachey]

image.jpeg

• smokin peachey
• Aug 3, 2016

I put two doors on mine that open to make a big door so it would be easy to fit a whole hog. I bent a peice of 1/8 plate and welded it on the inside of one door then did the same thing on the outside of the other door so they overlap.