14" Mini smoker!

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ledhead84

Smoke Blower
Original poster
Feb 9, 2011
85
10
Paris, On
My wife asked me to pick up a few things at the hardware store for the house...big mistake on her part,

I found a little 14ish" portable grill on sale for cheap cheap, it looked like i could make something out of it so had to pick it up...walking around the store i also found a stock pot on sale and looked to be about the same size as the grill. that reminded me of the smoky joe/tamale pot smokers I have seen on some other sites.....so thought I should give it a try, Not sure if it will work but what the hell.

It would be nice to have something more portable for camping etc..

All the parts laid out with the pig and crossbaccon RF huffing away on some riblets and spares...my grilling buddy is watching temps for me...

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Looks like this was pretty much made to go together....

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More to come later....too nice of a day to sit waiting for pictures to upload
 
I'm likin this already, You must have a keen eye for dimensions to tell that grill was gonna fit on that big A$$ pot so nicely 
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More lucky i think....well semi luck, the top of the pot works perfect for the grill and lid, but it tapers in at the bottom so it is too small to sit nicely on the base...pics below

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As mentioned above the pot is too small on the bottom to sit on the base nicely...but easy fix...the pot lid fits perfect on the base so i cut around the grove and just kept the lip of the lid to create a nice transition.

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I just have to connect the pot with the lip lid....i am thinking a few tack welds and seal it up with some high temp silicone.

The lid on the mini grill hinged to the base so i moved the lower portion of the hinge to the pot...should be a nice feature

The legs on the bottom fold in too so makes it even easier to throw in the car, also it will still work as a mini grill by just taking the extension out.

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Just have to fab up a fire basket (the pot is actualy a canning pot so it came with rack that looks like it might be able to be modified into a basket), make soemthing to secure the grill and it will be functional (don't know if it will work)....might also put a lower rack in to hold a drip pan/heat sink/water pan if needed.. I also would like to put some latches between the base and the pot and the pot and the lid so its easy to move around.
 
This thing is pretty much building itself. The grill had a hoop that goes over the handle on the lid to make it portable. So i drilled a few holes and mounted the hoop to the pot. I was able to salvage the handles from the canning basket to make latches to hold the base to the pot. With everything latched up you can pick it up with one hand. With the legs folded in it makes it nice and compact

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Got the fire basket put together with some left over expanded sheet metal and the charcoal grate from the little grill. Welded some bolts to the bottom to lift it up a bit. The cannibalized grill just let the charcoal grate sit right on the bottom with only about 1/4" below it.

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I wanted to make a lower rack to put a water pan/drip pan, the canning basket turned upside down works perfectly.

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Just have to figure out something for the food grate to sit on the edge lip of the pot. the grate is a bout 3/16" of an inch to big to fit inside so i want to give it some support so it doesn't tip.
 
 
Well almost a year later i finally got to trying this thing out. Had small mapleleaf prepackaged cornbeef brisket i wanted to smoke for lunch. I was going to fire up my patio size RF but decided to give this one a try instead. So far so good! it has been going for the past three hours on a and handful of lit lump and few handfuls of unlit lump, and a big chunk of cherry wood. Got up to temp super fast, maybe 20 min after it was lit it was around 270, put my brisket on and and closed down the vents it settled to 240 hasn't moved much between 235-250 in that time with minor adjustments to the vents.
 
I think i will be using the mini much more, worked great.

Full penetration of the smoke ring, nice and tender. Prepackaged corn beef was a little salty, but not bad.

Still had lots of fuel left in the smoker when the brisket was down so i opened up the vents threw on some Bratwurst  to go with dinner. They turned out awesome too.

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