- Feb 24, 2015
- 215
- 24
I have a 30" MES Gen 2 smoker that I have been using with the Amazn pellet tray and mailbox mod. I did a smoke of 3 racks of ribs last weekend, and as usual I nuked the pellets before smoking them (1 minute at a time, stir and repeat for a total of 3 times), then lit them and placed the tray at the opening of my mailbox to wait out the 10 minutes before I could blow out the flame and let the smoking begin. It was about 95 degrees, not much breeze and the sun was directly on the mailbox. I went inside for 6 minutes, came out to make sure there was still a flame to be had and the entire tray full of pelets had a strong flame going, which melted the plastic pieces inside the mailbox (the ones that old the front latch and the flag). It was smelling all sorts of toxic from the plastic I presume. I put out the fire in the tray, used new pellets, relit the tray and put the tray inside the smoker since my mailbox now had melted plastic bits and probably toxic residue in it - and of course, it only smoked for 20 mins or so before the lack of airflow choked out the pellets (which is why I was using the mailbox mod in the first place)..
So now, I need a new mailbox. I came back in here to look up the mod again and saw some threads that say to avoid galvanized steel. For my last one I just bought the cheap plain one at my local store for $10, Im pretty sure it was probably galvanized as it never rusted, and it got rained and snowed on for the past 15 months. Im looking around and I cant really find any normal looking mailboxes that are non galvanized steel, and the aluminum ones are like $80 online. Can anyone recommend a mailbox for this? Or is the galvanizing not a big deal?
This is what it looked like before:
This is what it looks like now:
So now, I need a new mailbox. I came back in here to look up the mod again and saw some threads that say to avoid galvanized steel. For my last one I just bought the cheap plain one at my local store for $10, Im pretty sure it was probably galvanized as it never rusted, and it got rained and snowed on for the past 15 months. Im looking around and I cant really find any normal looking mailboxes that are non galvanized steel, and the aluminum ones are like $80 online. Can anyone recommend a mailbox for this? Or is the galvanizing not a big deal?
This is what it looked like before:
This is what it looks like now: