- Mar 19, 2009
- 42
- 10
sorry this is so long, ill explain why at the end
so i have been a member of this forum for a couple years (roughly) but i just lit my first fire in my first smoker tonight. so a couple years ago i got really interested in smoking meat and decided to learn. so i got a piece of 20inch long 18inch diameter pipe with 3/8inch wall thickness free from a friend, welded 3/8inch plate to the ends and cut out a connecting hole in one end and a door in the other end. installed hinges and a door to control the air intake. the work came to a halt because i couldnt find any free pipe to make a cooking chamber with. then recently one of my dads coworkers was throwing away a store bought "new braunfels" offset style smoker because the fire box was rusted out. i figure it wasnt the perfect chamber i was looking for but i was kinda tired of waiting, so i connected the two together and ended up having to weld on a extra leg under the fire box to support the extra weight. today i went up to the family ranch and found a dead oak tree that was dead and fallen but not on the ground. the wood was nice and dry but not rotten. so i cut and split quite a bit of it and brought it home. i decided to do a test run tonight and see if i could get the smoker to stay at a constant temperature so about an hour ago i made a fire using all oak and right now im working a trying to get it to hold a constant temperature, im bouncing back and forth between 150 and 250. any suggestions of pointers? im using both the air intake and the plate on top of the chimney to control the temp moving only one at a time and making small adjustments.
PS i know how much people on forums like pictures so ill try and post pics tomorrow
so i have been a member of this forum for a couple years (roughly) but i just lit my first fire in my first smoker tonight. so a couple years ago i got really interested in smoking meat and decided to learn. so i got a piece of 20inch long 18inch diameter pipe with 3/8inch wall thickness free from a friend, welded 3/8inch plate to the ends and cut out a connecting hole in one end and a door in the other end. installed hinges and a door to control the air intake. the work came to a halt because i couldnt find any free pipe to make a cooking chamber with. then recently one of my dads coworkers was throwing away a store bought "new braunfels" offset style smoker because the fire box was rusted out. i figure it wasnt the perfect chamber i was looking for but i was kinda tired of waiting, so i connected the two together and ended up having to weld on a extra leg under the fire box to support the extra weight. today i went up to the family ranch and found a dead oak tree that was dead and fallen but not on the ground. the wood was nice and dry but not rotten. so i cut and split quite a bit of it and brought it home. i decided to do a test run tonight and see if i could get the smoker to stay at a constant temperature so about an hour ago i made a fire using all oak and right now im working a trying to get it to hold a constant temperature, im bouncing back and forth between 150 and 250. any suggestions of pointers? im using both the air intake and the plate on top of the chimney to control the temp moving only one at a time and making small adjustments.
PS i know how much people on forums like pictures so ill try and post pics tomorrow