- Apr 24, 2010
- 402
- 16
I'm on my third or fourth smoke now with a new smoker.
I got one of those cheap and small Char Broil things from Wally World. It's was a real piece of junk but I knew that just looking at it in the store. It did however provide a frame work to work with in order to build a nice small sized smoker.
I wanted a smallish one because there are just the two of us to cook for. I also wanted an offset smoker so I could use it as a grill from time to time. I have a very small yard and don't have the space for too many contraptions.
So far I've moved chimney, built a charcoal basket, added to the thickness of the sheet metal of both the fire box and cooking chamber, added a front shelf, redesigned the fire box to have a slide out ash try, sealed it up, built my own digitally controlled stoker and have got the thing pretty well tuned up using a sheet metal heat deflector and fire bricks.
It's now cooking without too much fuss and muss while not wasting so much fuel as to keep me hopping for all those hours of smoking. It's also no longer burning the paint off the outside, not even the top of the fire box, so I'm taking that as a good sign of decent heat retention.
I got one of those cheap and small Char Broil things from Wally World. It's was a real piece of junk but I knew that just looking at it in the store. It did however provide a frame work to work with in order to build a nice small sized smoker.
I wanted a smallish one because there are just the two of us to cook for. I also wanted an offset smoker so I could use it as a grill from time to time. I have a very small yard and don't have the space for too many contraptions.
So far I've moved chimney, built a charcoal basket, added to the thickness of the sheet metal of both the fire box and cooking chamber, added a front shelf, redesigned the fire box to have a slide out ash try, sealed it up, built my own digitally controlled stoker and have got the thing pretty well tuned up using a sheet metal heat deflector and fire bricks.
It's now cooking without too much fuss and muss while not wasting so much fuel as to keep me hopping for all those hours of smoking. It's also no longer burning the paint off the outside, not even the top of the fire box, so I'm taking that as a good sign of decent heat retention.
