Hey everyone, I recently built an offset smoker out of a 55 gallon drum and a side fire box out of 1/8" steel. I have the chimmney down at grate level, i put in tuning plates about 4 inches below the grates, have a nice air inlet on my fire box that is a little lower than my charcoal grate, and i also had a baffle to push the heat down. I put these in right off the bat before any burns. I recently did a few practice burns and noticed i wasnt getting much above 175. I took out the deflector baffle and that brought the hot side up to about 200 and then i took a tuning plate out that was closest to the fire box and got it in the lower portion of my 220-250 target area. My cold side still wont go much above 175, its like i cant quite get the heat transfer right. I took all the tuning plates out because that just lowered my overall temp. Im not sure if anyone can help but some input would be greatly appreciated. Pics are on my profile in the album if you would like to see them. Thank you