First Smoker Mods

[nkpal624]

I went to the hardware store and picked up some supplies and with the help of amazon, hopefully I now have a well-sealed smoker. I have been using a cheap offset smoker for the past 6 months since I started smoking and decided to try to add some things to even-off the temperature at the grates and keep the heat in better. My biggest struggle has been with maintaining a level temperature which I assume is due to the bad insulation.
I have added some sealant strips around the contact points of the lids on both the smoker box and the fire box. I have also filed the inside of the smoking chamber and added a couple of bricks to it. I made some baffles out of 26 gauge sheet metal as well to help control the entry of the heat and smoke into the chamber. I also added a dryer vent hose to the chimney to bring the exit point to grate-level on the opposite side of the fire box.
Finally I added some sealant between the two chambers and replaced the melted factory grate in the fire box with some expanded metal. This was a temporary solution and I will need to make some improvements here. I will add some pictures to the post too.

Let me know if you have any advice on ways I can improve this in the future and more modifications I can make. Trying to stretch this cheap offset smoker's capabilities without breaking the bank.

 

[gmc2003]

Looks pretty good. Allot more then I did with mine. I only made a couple of changes on mine. I did the dryer hose mod as you have done, but instead of building baffles I just flipped the ash catcher in the CC upside down. I wanted to make a charcoal basket for the fire chamber, but things got in the way and I never got around to it.

Chris

 

[nkpal624]

Two hours into my pork but smoke and the cooking chamber seems to be holding a steady temperature much better than before. Glad to see the mods are paying off for me.