Materbuilt Smoker upgrade - smoke pan

Hi.

I'm new to the forum this week, but I did something to improve my Masterbuilt smoker that I wanted to share it with you.

I looked at a post somewhere that showed all kinds of stips of aluminum foil needed to cover the opening in the wood pan to stop the wood from starting on fire.

I've been using the cast iron pan method.

It works perfect, but as everyone knows, it really makes it difficult to put 'new' wood chips into the pan in the middle of a smoke.

All I did was take a hammer to the 3 raised pieces of sheet metal and flatten them down onto the pan surface.

Not only does it close off the air slots, but it also allows the cast iron pan to sit lower in the pan, allowing for  more access to add wood.

Check out the photos.

It took all of 2 minutes to do.

I was careful when pounding it that I didn't bend or damage the 3 fragile legs under the bottom of the fire pan.

I suspect that if I really focused on flattening it even better, I wouldn't even need the cast iron pan.  I might try that next.

Thanks, hope this helps.

Wayne