Ultra Big Ugly Drum Smoker - UBUDS - starting now.

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greechneb

Fire Starter
Original poster
Mar 21, 2010
60
10
Central US
I've been smoking with a Char-Griller smoking pro smoker for several years now. I modded it up, and it gets decent performance, the only real downside is having to baby sit the thing. Every hour adding charcoal, fighting with temps, I get tired of messing with it. A few months ago, my dad was cleaning out his junk piles when scrap metal was high, and decided most everything was going. I grabbed the start of my build.


Its an old 150 gallon fuel tank that hasn't been used in around 20 years or so. It measures around 30" in diameter by 48" tall. My basic plan is to build a large UDS from it. I debated doing a reverse flow smoker, but I settled on trying to make a tight upright from it to make it more efficient and self sufficient smoker. It will probably be a slow build, but it's in progress. So far my only expense has been new grates for it. After some searching, the largest and cheapest round grates I could find were 24.5" grates. I'll have around a 2.5" gap around the outside from the grates, but it won't be too bad.

Two of those only set me back $32 including shipping from campmor, they should be here Monday. Total cooking area will be 943 square inches. 


The firebox will rest on an old 21" standard metal grate, with extruded metal mesh.

The exhaust will be made of 3" exhaust pipe that was in the scrap pile.

Here's a few other pictures of the pre-build UBUDS:



 
Not much progress, but I spent about 15 minutes on it tonight, and made the first cut.

I started out by marking out the lid:


About 10 minutes of cutting, and voila she's topless!


I dumped out around 3 gallons of rust and dirt. Suprisingly, there was still shiny metal on part of the inside. I'll do a burnout sometime soon and hopefully that will free up a lot of the rust.

So here's where it stands as of tonight:

 
So today, a package arrived, and it was my new grill grates. Here they are sitting on top of my weber to show you a comparison of sizes.


So after I cut the top off in the last installment, the barrel was a little floppy on the open end.


Fortunately when we bought our house, we had a big pile of assorted steel pipe that was left. I got some that was about 3/8" or 7/16" thick wall. I hand bent it around the outside of the barrel, and then cut it off to make a circle to go inside. I clamped it on the inside, just even with the top:


I got out my cheapo harbor freight wire welder, and then welded it about every six inches. Let me tell you, I stink at stick welding, but having a wire feed welder, even a cheap one made my welds look much better. The top is now 100% stronger.


Here's a rough idea of how the grates will be a little small, but not too bad. If anyone asks it is a design feature to improve airflow around the outside of the grates, right?


Next time I'll work on the lid, and a couple of pinholes in the sides.
 
Greech, morning...  that looks good...  Are you welding a couple tabs on the lid for alignment ???

Drilling holes for rebar to support the grates ???   Or are you that far in planning yet....  The suspense is thickening....  Dave
 
My daughter had soccer practice last night, so I didn't have much time to really work on the smoker. I bought a couple of 1" strips of steel


And welded around the lid to make my overlapping joint


I have some minor fit problems from this because when I welded my ring on the inside, the barrel deformed a little. I'll have to spend a little time making it back to round. Next time I hope to start working on some handles for the lid. It's a pain to try to pick up with nothing to grab.
 
Glad I came across this. I am about to start building 2 smokers. One of my tanks is the exact same as yours. Mind if I follow and maybe steal some ideas? Looks good so far.
 
Looking good so far. That is going to be a big boy for sure
 
I'd estimate the lid it will be around 20 pounds or maybe more by the time I am done. My wife won't be picking it up, that's for sure.

I finally had time to get back to working on the smoker. I ran out to our stockpile of lumber, and grabbed some 2" white oak. We had several acres cut down and sawn when there was a road changed back in 1993, so it is well seasoned to say the least. A few cuts on the table saw and I had octagonal blanks.


 Marked the centers, and put them on the lathe:


Turned them down, sanded and ended up with three nice handles ready to mount:

 
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