I'll preface this with a heartfelt apology to all my SMF friends. I've missed a ton of amazing stuff recently due to simply not having time to follow everything that's been going on. This is my crazy time of year at work. All the builders are trying to get their construction projects to certain points of completion and inspected (by me) before the holiday shut down so the schedule has been full for the past few weeks. Add to that every spare minute I've has has been spent working on this smoker build and I've been completely covered up.
I have seen a couple of recent builds by people that look absolutely amazing. Truly works of art. Sadly mine does not come anywhere close to what those guys have done but based on a severe lack of experience and equipment I've done the best I could. My metal fabrication tools include a Milwaukee Super Sawzall, a Milwaukee drill, a MIG welder I bought a couple months ago, and a Ryobi 4 1/2" angle grinder. That's about it. My "shop" is a very limited amount of space in the garage and to get that space I had to park the truck in the driveway for a while.Needless to say, I'm working in a very rudimentary environment
Now, this is a concept for the build that I've never seen or heard of. I came up with this brain fart all by myself after thinking through it for a couple weeks and deciding it might actually work. Took the plunge and ordered some plate steel from a local supplier and started cutting stuff. Literally I made this up piece by piece as I went with no plans at all, just an idea. Please bear in mind as you go through this that I've never welded a thing until very recently so the welding technique is a work in progress.
First project was a small table top Santa Maria grill I put together with leftover pieces from previous cookers and some scrap metal I had laying around. I posted this one a little while back.
Second project was a considerably larger Santa Maria grill I built for our good friend John (
SmokinVOLfan
) and did some custom stuff for him. This one was kinda tricky having to re-fabricate all the mounting hardware for the rotisserie
Third project was a battle tank that doubles as a multi purpose cooker. My neighbor fell in love with this one and immediately bought it.
Now to my 4th project...my new vertical cabinet smoker. Started out by building the side panels. Please note the two channels running up each panel with the holes cut in them. They will open into the top of the fire box....at least that's the plan. The large holes in the bottom are for the lower dampers. These panels are 2' x 5'.
Side panels attached to the back, the first plate installed between the fire box & cook chamber, and a heat deflector fabricated. You'll understand shortly.
Bottom installed, casters bolted on, and fire box door in place.
Cook chamber door and stay-cool handles installed. These hinges wound up not working so I had to cut them off and use different ones. Please excuse the clutter in my "shop". I just don't have a lot of space but own a ton of stuff.
Fabricate the dampers for the fire box
All the major components assembled and now it's time to stand it up. Had to use the tractor with the loader bucket and heavy duty straps to do this. It's WAY too heavy for one person to handle. Tack the dampers in place till I get them exactly where I want them then complete the welds
The burner assemble I put together. Looks like something out of Battle Star Galactica but it works great.
Put one inch of concrete material on top of the plate between the fire box and cook chamber.
Add a second steel plate on top of the concrete material. The idea of the 2 steel plates, the concrete, and heat deflector plate are to avoid a direct heat blast into the bottom of the cook chamber and direct the heat to the channels on the sides.
Install the guides for the cooking grates
Grates all built
Hey!! They actually fit.
Drill for all the hardware, install it, and make sure it all fits and works as intended. Remove the hardware, tape off the handles, and shoot the first coat of paint.
Looking pretty good in my estimation.
All the hardware reinstalled and rolled out to the patio....by myself. This was a HUGE undertaking as I had 4 steps to get up and down and this thing is monstrously heavy.
Burner assembly installed and the grate I built to set the smoker wood pan on top of
Wait!! What's this? A bottle of bourbon I received from our friend Jim (
JLeonard
) in our Christmas exchange and a tumbler with some ice cubes in it. Must be an omen....and a good one at that
For having basically zero experience metal fabricating I am not disappointed with the final outcome. Heck, I even trimmed the outside with angle iron to finish it off and look nice.
Time to fire it up for the initial burn in. I have a bit of paint touch up to do so have not removed the tape yet. Pics are a bit out of order. I did manage to achieve the highly sought after TBS.
My objective with this design was to attain perfectly balanced temps throughout the cook chamber. These are Tel Tru competition grade thermometers and are spot on. I confirmed with the boiling water test. Looks like I managed to hit on at least one aspect of my intended design
So I got the TBS, the balanced temps, and ran the burn-in for about 6 hours on Thursday. Time to toss on a rack of St. Louis ribs Friday just as a test run for Christmas dinner. I'm OK with what is happening here.
As stated in the title, this was a very ambitious build with my extremely limited experience and rudimentary tools. Although a ton of work and taking 3 weeks to the day of afternoons and weekends to do, I am very happy with the outcome. Giving some consideration to selling this one and building a smaller one. This is WAY bigger than we need. Heck, you can get 6 whole packer briskets on it, or 12 pork butts,or 9-12 racks of ribs. That's a bit more than two of us would need for a dinner. The beauty of this design is the tremendous cooking capacity from a rig that has such a small foot print. It does not take up a lot of space but you can cook a ton of food on it.
Well, this has been a LONG post and I have things to wrap up from yesterday. Hoping everybody had a great Christmas and are looking forward to a happy New Year. Thank you for dropping in and if you made it all the way to the end of this, you're destined for sainthood
See y'all again soon I hope,
Robert
I have seen a couple of recent builds by people that look absolutely amazing. Truly works of art. Sadly mine does not come anywhere close to what those guys have done but based on a severe lack of experience and equipment I've done the best I could. My metal fabrication tools include a Milwaukee Super Sawzall, a Milwaukee drill, a MIG welder I bought a couple months ago, and a Ryobi 4 1/2" angle grinder. That's about it. My "shop" is a very limited amount of space in the garage and to get that space I had to park the truck in the driveway for a while.Needless to say, I'm working in a very rudimentary environment
Now, this is a concept for the build that I've never seen or heard of. I came up with this brain fart all by myself after thinking through it for a couple weeks and deciding it might actually work. Took the plunge and ordered some plate steel from a local supplier and started cutting stuff. Literally I made this up piece by piece as I went with no plans at all, just an idea. Please bear in mind as you go through this that I've never welded a thing until very recently so the welding technique is a work in progress.First project was a small table top Santa Maria grill I put together with leftover pieces from previous cookers and some scrap metal I had laying around. I posted this one a little while back.
Second project was a considerably larger Santa Maria grill I built for our good friend John (
SmokinVOLfan
) and did some custom stuff for him. This one was kinda tricky having to re-fabricate all the mounting hardware for the rotisserie
Third project was a battle tank that doubles as a multi purpose cooker. My neighbor fell in love with this one and immediately bought it.
Now to my 4th project...my new vertical cabinet smoker. Started out by building the side panels. Please note the two channels running up each panel with the holes cut in them. They will open into the top of the fire box....at least that's the plan. The large holes in the bottom are for the lower dampers. These panels are 2' x 5'.
Side panels attached to the back, the first plate installed between the fire box & cook chamber, and a heat deflector fabricated. You'll understand shortly.
Bottom installed, casters bolted on, and fire box door in place.
Cook chamber door and stay-cool handles installed. These hinges wound up not working so I had to cut them off and use different ones. Please excuse the clutter in my "shop". I just don't have a lot of space but own a ton of stuff.
Fabricate the dampers for the fire box
All the major components assembled and now it's time to stand it up. Had to use the tractor with the loader bucket and heavy duty straps to do this. It's WAY too heavy for one person to handle. Tack the dampers in place till I get them exactly where I want them then complete the welds
The burner assemble I put together. Looks like something out of Battle Star Galactica but it works great.
Put one inch of concrete material on top of the plate between the fire box and cook chamber.
Add a second steel plate on top of the concrete material. The idea of the 2 steel plates, the concrete, and heat deflector plate are to avoid a direct heat blast into the bottom of the cook chamber and direct the heat to the channels on the sides.
Install the guides for the cooking grates
Grates all built
Hey!! They actually fit.
Drill for all the hardware, install it, and make sure it all fits and works as intended. Remove the hardware, tape off the handles, and shoot the first coat of paint.
Looking pretty good in my estimation.
All the hardware reinstalled and rolled out to the patio....by myself. This was a HUGE undertaking as I had 4 steps to get up and down and this thing is monstrously heavy.
Burner assembly installed and the grate I built to set the smoker wood pan on top of
Wait!! What's this? A bottle of bourbon I received from our friend Jim (
JLeonard
) in our Christmas exchange and a tumbler with some ice cubes in it. Must be an omen....and a good one at that
For having basically zero experience metal fabricating I am not disappointed with the final outcome. Heck, I even trimmed the outside with angle iron to finish it off and look nice.
Time to fire it up for the initial burn in. I have a bit of paint touch up to do so have not removed the tape yet. Pics are a bit out of order. I did manage to achieve the highly sought after TBS.
My objective with this design was to attain perfectly balanced temps throughout the cook chamber. These are Tel Tru competition grade thermometers and are spot on. I confirmed with the boiling water test. Looks like I managed to hit on at least one aspect of my intended design
So I got the TBS, the balanced temps, and ran the burn-in for about 6 hours on Thursday. Time to toss on a rack of St. Louis ribs Friday just as a test run for Christmas dinner. I'm OK with what is happening here.
As stated in the title, this was a very ambitious build with my extremely limited experience and rudimentary tools. Although a ton of work and taking 3 weeks to the day of afternoons and weekends to do, I am very happy with the outcome. Giving some consideration to selling this one and building a smaller one. This is WAY bigger than we need. Heck, you can get 6 whole packer briskets on it, or 12 pork butts,or 9-12 racks of ribs. That's a bit more than two of us would need for a dinner. The beauty of this design is the tremendous cooking capacity from a rig that has such a small foot print. It does not take up a lot of space but you can cook a ton of food on it.
Well, this has been a LONG post and I have things to wrap up from yesterday. Hoping everybody had a great Christmas and are looking forward to a happy New Year. Thank you for dropping in and if you made it all the way to the end of this, you're destined for sainthood
See y'all again soon I hope,
Robert
