I wish I had found this forum sooner!
I got interested in the uds from the Popular Mechanics article. Without any other research I bought my food grade drum for $20. What I didn't know about was the dreaded toxic red liner. Realizing I had it I researched removing it and thought I was going to have to pay someone to sand blast. But instead I bought a $10 angle grinder and some 40-60 grit sanding disks to try myself. It came off a lot simpler than I was led to believe by all I read. A few hours of grinding and it was done. But lesson learned for the next drum. He had non-food grade drums for $15 but I don't know what was in them or what kind of lining.
I was going to follow the PM instructions, but I see from posts on here that there are some design flaws. One I saw was that all 4 intakes don't need 24" pipes. So I figured I'll go with only 1 long pipe?
1st question - 3 or 4 intake holes and 3/4" or 1"? I'm ready to do a burn and season to it because it's bare steel right now on the inside and I want to make sure I drill the holes right. I wiped the inside down with some oil so it doesn't rust before then.
2 - Do I need to do anything to the outside after the burn? I'm keeping this down and dirty (and cheap) so I don't want to bother painting it if I don't have to.
3 - Any other suggestions regarding mods to the PM build?
Looking forward to all the great advice and smoking my 1st piece of meat on my UDS!
I got interested in the uds from the Popular Mechanics article. Without any other research I bought my food grade drum for $20. What I didn't know about was the dreaded toxic red liner. Realizing I had it I researched removing it and thought I was going to have to pay someone to sand blast. But instead I bought a $10 angle grinder and some 40-60 grit sanding disks to try myself. It came off a lot simpler than I was led to believe by all I read. A few hours of grinding and it was done. But lesson learned for the next drum. He had non-food grade drums for $15 but I don't know what was in them or what kind of lining.
I was going to follow the PM instructions, but I see from posts on here that there are some design flaws. One I saw was that all 4 intakes don't need 24" pipes. So I figured I'll go with only 1 long pipe?
1st question - 3 or 4 intake holes and 3/4" or 1"? I'm ready to do a burn and season to it because it's bare steel right now on the inside and I want to make sure I drill the holes right. I wiped the inside down with some oil so it doesn't rust before then.
2 - Do I need to do anything to the outside after the burn? I'm keeping this down and dirty (and cheap) so I don't want to bother painting it if I don't have to.
3 - Any other suggestions regarding mods to the PM build?
Looking forward to all the great advice and smoking my 1st piece of meat on my UDS!
