Air Intake Size for Stockpot (Mailbox) Mod?

[klr]

Christmas came early and my wife gave me my first ever smoker; a MES 140S from Cabela's. I love to tinker so I got right to building a "mailbox" for a 5x8 A-Maze-n pellet tray.

I came up with a smoke chamber built out of a $10 12qt stockpot from Wal-Mart. One question I have is how many and what size of air holes to put in it? Right now I'm thinking about drilling four 1/2" holes under the pellet tray. Any advice would be appreciated, and if you see some other huge flaw please let me know. I did a brief test burn and the lid does not leak any smoke.

Tomorrow I'm going to try Bear's double smoked ham recipe for Thanksgiving.

Thanks.

 

[Winterrider]

I think mine were 1" holes, 2 bottom 1 top. Similar to Davomak, post # 30 in this thread.

MES Mailbox Mod! for use with AMNPS

Imagine that hooked to the bottom vent of my Weber kettle grill as well ....

www.smokingmeatforums.com

 

[klr]

Thanks for the link. It looks like I may need more air than I originally thought, but I won't know until I try it.

 

[normanaj]

Love the idea of using a stock pot.That looks awesome.

 

[maplenut]

Very creative in using a SS pot. I love it.

 

[BuckeyeSteve]

I used a large popcorn tin and drilled four 1" holes on the side down low. I use refrigerator magnets to close the holes as needed to control the airflow.
See post #245 https://www.smokingmeatforums.com/threads/mes-mailbox-mod-for-use-with-amnps.127770/page-13

I love the stock pot idea. Nice thinking outside the box.

 

[klr]

Thanks, guys. I picked the stock pot because it was food grade stainless and cheap.

Last night I drilled two rows of 3/8" holes under where the pellet tray rests. There are 5 holes per row. This morning I started smoking at 5 am and the pellets were all gone in less than 3 hours. Ooops, too much air. I covered six of the holes with aluminum foil and it's smoking nicely now.

 

[BuckeyeSteve]

Glad to hear it's working out. Let us know how the ham turned out.

 

[klr]

With the 4 hole setup I got 2.5 hours from a little over a third of the tray of pellets. It burned down the first row and around the corner before I pulled the tray out and stopped smoking. At that point I was running out of time and had to wrap the ham in foil and finish it in the oven at a higher temp.

Still, the ham was good. I thought the smoke flavor was a little strong, but the family liked it and there wasn't much left after people went back for seconds and thirds.

I'm going to experiment with the air openings and burn a few trays of pellets before I smoke meat again. I think maybe I need to slow down the pellet burn rate a little more.