Making a couple 120 gallon offsets

[antirice]

Your design is looking REAL nice! Waiting to see some in progress pictures!

Thanks! I have a few more things to work out and then some dimensions to double check (grating height, spacing, etc) before I start cutting. But it won't be too long!

 

[antirice]

I have a friend that's a nuclear engineer that works a lot with thermodynamics (predicting fluid and temperature movement within a reactor, for instance). I asked him about the design of my baffle at the FB to CC opening and he offered to run calculations to either verify that the design should work, or make suggestions as to what to change. He also said that, in the near future, they're getting software that should allow him to upload a solidworks model and run simulations/testing that should be pretty true to life. Depending on how progress goes, I miiiight be about ready to fab the baffle around the time that he'll be ready to run the simulation.

Is this all WAAAY overkill? yes. Am I still geeking out about it? Absolutely.



In the meantime, I have managed to talk the boss into swapping the use of a corner of the shop in exchange for some beer/bbq once the smoker is done. I brought two of the three tank in to work today and should begin at least the layout portion of the build soon. It'll be nice to be able to post actual pictures instead of screenshots!

 

[antirice]

On a slightly different note, I've been looking into various suggestions as to how to cut into the tanks safely. Based on what I've seen, it looks like my best bet will be to fill the tanks completely with water, tilting ever so slightly back and forth a little to make sure that there are no trapped bubbles and then top it off and start cutting from the top down. The plan is to do my cutting with an angle grinder and a cutoff wheel, except maybe in the corners where I don't want to overcut. There I'll just use a sawzall and a nice metal blade.

Unless there's a better idea out there, this is how I'll proceed.

Thoughts?

 

[antirice]

See if you can get your mitts on a plasma cutter somehow. Rent maybe. Your cutting will be done before you realize you started.

We've got a half-dozen plasma cutters here at work (where I'll be building the smoker), but I'm just not a huge fan of them. Maybe I've not had a lot of time running one, but I seem to get more consistently good cuts with a cutoff wheel and a grinder than I do with a plasma. the smoothness of the cut with the wheel also keeps cleanup to a minimum.

Considering that the wall thickness of the tank is only 1/4" - 5/16" or so, I'll probably just stick to the wheel. Any thicker and I'd be dragging the plasma out for sure.

 

[antirice]

The secrect to getting clean accurate cuts with a plasma cutter is really no secret. A good well maintained cutting tip and clean DRY air along with a steady hand and smooth action. Using cutting guides and straight edges helps ensure accurate clean cuts if you're like me and aren't so smooth freehanded..

We've got a massive dryer on our air system at work because of the sensitivity of the pneumatic systems in the water jet we have here. I am pretty sure that my poor results with the plasma are 100% operator error.

 

[antirice]

I'd like to say sorry in advance for the terribly cropped pics - it turns out that trying to keep things that'll get you in trouble for posting online out of the shot is infinitely harder when you're at work where those things are all located. Who knew?!

Got the first tank onto the stands today and started with marking the quadrants so that I had reference points to go off of.

In my head (and with my OCD), I NEEDED to set the tank level to the world based off of its feet (even though I will eventually cut the feet off of the tank anyway) and I was looking at all of the ports in the top that were going to need to be patched. A buddy walked by and said, "so you're going to make sure that the ports are all in the door cutout so you don't have to patch them, right?

As much as that wasn't the plan, it will be less detrimental to just form up a new door out of a sheet of steel than it would be to weld patches on 6 holes in a fairly small area right next to the opening for the door - I'm trying to keep warping to a minimum and it seems like not welding in the area at all will go a lot further towards that end than any other option I've got. So now that's the plan!

The above pic shows the quarter-mark in blue and the bottom of the door in green. It's going to work out just about perfectly.

As a side note, I LOVE these new stands that we got:

They're sure going to make the job easier! (nevermind the silver thumbnail. I painted a silver bracket I made for a buddy's fence before starting on the tank)

- Chris

 

[antirice]

I'm never really done, but I think I'm pretty much as far as I'm going to take it for the time being (other than maybe some baffle design tweaks). I came up with a plan for wheeling this thing to where it'll spend the rest of it's like too - removable wheels!

The adjustable feet will help with fine tuning things once it's in place and the wheels/axle are removed.

I also have the CC tank cuts pretty much all laid out and am ready to move forward with the FB tank. I'll get that taken care of this week and then likely cut them up this coming weekend. Wish me luck!

- Chris

 

[antirice]

Made a few design changes and got the lids cut!

I moved the firebox down and away from the CC about an inch and put what will end up being a rolled piece of flatbar between the two. That will make it so that the hole I need to cut is round and not some awkward shape. It'll also make the top of the entry point into the CC a little closer to the centerline. If that ends up being a bad thing I can always alter the baffle as needed.

I also shifted the axle so that it was up against a leg. This will put a little bit of weight on the handles, but not too much. It'll also make things way more structurally sound when I'm wheeling it around.



Filling the tanks with water really did the trick. I'm glad to have checked out this site prior to starting to work on this project!

Used a cutoff wheel to cut the openings (sorry Richard). As thin as the tank walls are, it didn't take long at all.

Man do these tanks stink. I rinsed them and rolled them upside down to sit and dry out. I left them set to the side and out of the way but even with a light breeze you can still smell that propane additive 20 ft away. I need to roll them upright and at least start a small fire in them to burn some of that crap out of there. I will get a rager going before cooking but I can't leave them indoors like they are now. Not if I want to stay employed, anyway.

- Chris

 

[JC in GB]

Looking good so far. Nice clean design. Can't wait to see your progress.

 

[antirice]

I'm the best grinder you can find because I have to be.

LOL I may resemble that remark!

I'll be pretty busy on the homefront for the next few days, so I'll have to look into burning them out early next week. I'm looking forward to the stink being gone!

 

[Berettaclayshooter]

I had a steel and concrete deck put up last summer. All the steel work was welded. While I liked the quality I kinda hated the one kid doing most of the welding. His stick welds were better than my MIG welds and his MIG welds were just friggin beautiful looking more like TIG welds. And he wasn't even trying for pretty or beautiful he was just trying to get it done. Galvanized plate decking, 1/8", 1/4', 1/2", 3/4" right side up, upside down, up, down, front side, back side, it really didn't matter what or how he made it all look easy and great.

I'm a fabricator/welder. I went to nationals through Skills USA when I was in Vo-tech for welding. To tell you the truth, I could care less about it. I mean I like nice looking welds, but don't obsess about them. I'm a fabricator first, so if the parts aren't right and the welds are beautiful, it's still scrap! I do a lot of food and pharmaceutical work, which requires mostly tig welding (I prefer do to being clean and spark free). Attached is a picture of a AL6XN tank I built for a candy company, it welds like poop, but still turned out well.

 

[Berettaclayshooter]

I stick welded over the 4th for a shutdown, it's been like 8 years since I've done any amount of it. I can still do it, but I feel it's just not the way to go with all the available options now. We had a suitcase welder and a mig onsite. I could do triple the work output without all the chipping and brushing. The foreman onsite chose to use fluxcore wire, which a lot of it was bare steel and we could have done regular solid wire which would have given us a higher yield without stopping to chip slag..

 

[antirice]

Had a break in my usually hectic schedule today after work and made a little progress.

I really only meant to start a small (ish) fire - just enough to burn out the stinky stuff. I never was very good at making small fires. I burned all of the paint off of one and just about rendered my lines worthless on the second.

Oh well, I left enough center-punch marks that I can redraw them. I did have a bit of a laugh at myself when I watched the paint falling off.

Good news is that the stink is gone! Time to drag them back in the shop and get to work.

- Chris

 

[antirice]

Got a lot done this weekend!

First was cutting off all of the remaining legs, picking eyes, etc from both tanks. I am always apprehensive about cutting too far and getting into the base metal. Apprehension and caution considered, I still cut into the base metal more than I care to admit. Nothing significant - just enough to ugly it up. I might fill in the grooves I made with a small weld and then buff smooth. Maybe not. We'll see.

Then I had to re-draw the lines on the tank that had the paint burn off. Someone ran off with the laser tripod that I was using, so I had to improvise. Turns out forklifts work nicely as a substitute!

Once the lines were redrawn on both tanks, it was time to finish cutting the FB tank in half.

Once that was done, I just set everything roughly where it'll go to get a feel for things.

I also cut some of the tubing (we didn't have enough on-hand at the moment) for the legs/base.

That was Saturday's progress.

- Chris

 

[antirice]

Today there was less going on in the big shop so I was able to get in there without being in other folks' way. I'm sure the boss would frown on a home project getting in the way of a paying job, so I try to be extra conscientious of what's going on before I make a mess.

I started by making light-gauge templates to try and confirm my layout and design. Working with compound curves (the domed endcaps, for instance), computer design almost never agrees with reality and there's almost always some hand-fitting that needs to happen.. I just wanted to make sure that I was close enough to allow for that.

Waterjets make for nice template cutters

Glad I checked!

This'll be close enough - I'll just leave the fitting a little long since the exhaust plenum will stick through the hole that I'm cutting in the endcap. Once I have a chance to slip it in, I can trace and trim as needed.

I also made a template for the FB-to-CC adapter.

It fit quite a bit better than the exhaust plenum did, though still not perfect. Again though, it's close enough for government work.

With the templates adjusted, it was time to move out into the shop!

 

[antirice]

I love having a shop full of tools readily accessible. This is some of the process for rolling up the piece that will eventually be trimmed down to become the FB-to-CC adapter.

I also went ahead and cut out the exhaust plenum parts and made a little progress on that assembly.

I didn't form up the transition piece that will weld to the top of the plenum and also to the stack. I wanted to get the rest of the assembly at least tacked together to make sure that I didn't need to do any last-minute adjusting. Then I'll form that piece up and weld it in.

Time to go home and enjoy a Sunday afternoon with the family. I should make some more headway later this week!

- Chris



PS: After seeing some of the craftsmen on here make their beautiful smokers with sticks and rocks for tools, some of this feels like cheating if I'm honest. I'll consider myself to be doing well if it comes out half as nice as some of the builds on here that were done with some pretty basic hand tools. Y'all are inspiring.

 

[antirice]

Sorry to have fallen off of the face of the earth - three kids starting up school (and extracurriculars) along with a few changes at work have made my schedule super busy as of late. I am still slowly making progress, but not much update/photo worthy yet. I have the FB to CC holes cut now and the tubing for the stand ready to put together. I'm going to tack the doubler plates onto the tanks and dry fit everything before welding it all out and moving forward on the other details.

I figured since I was only working on it an hour here and an hour there, I'd take pics along the way and make one big post once I'd met some sort of milestone.

Stay tuned!

- Chris

 

[Weaverspitbbq]

Hi all -

Figured I'd start a thread to keep track of my progress on the smokers I'm designing/building. Nothing too extravagant - just a couple 120 gallon tank builds. I found a cheap supplier, so I bought three tanks. One for me, one for my dad, and one to either cut in half and use as fire boxes for our two smokers, or maybe build and sell a third one to help offset the costs associated with the project. We shall see. Not very many folks are looking for stick burners up where I'm at.

They're about perfect size for smaller backyard bbqs - in the end I should have enough space for about 4 briskets and a water pan with room to spare.

My initial idea was to build one that can be converted from RF to standard flow but, after reading about the success that folks seem to have with tuning plates, I think i'll just stick to the traditional flow. I want to have a hot and cold side if I'm smoking/cooking different things, but also want to be able to even things out in the event I'm actually cooking 4 briskets at once. I think tuning plates will be the way to go.

I do metal work (design and fab) for a living, so I will have this whole build modeled in Solidworks before I ever start cutting. If you're along for the ride, there will be plenty of screenshots and then, once the build starts, lots of pics too.

- Chris

If you fill the out up with meat you dont beed tuning plates most pits cook better fully loaded than a few pics meat ..

 

[smokin peachey]

Sorry to have fallen off of the face of the earth - three kids starting up school (and extracurriculars) along with a few changes at work have made my schedule super busy as of late. I am still slowly making progress, but not much update/photo worthy yet. I have the FB to CC holes cut now and the tubing for the stand ready to put together. I'm going to tack the doubler plates onto the tanks and dry fit everything before welding it all out and moving forward on the other details.

I figured since I was only working on it an hour here and an hour there, I'd take pics along the way and make one big post once I'd met some sort of milestone.

Stay tuned!

- Chris

Nice build and tool collection. I wish I would have had access to half of those tools when I did my 500 gallon tank build.

 

[antirice]

Finally, some progress worth mentioning!

Before I go any further - I know I'm not a great welder. Feel free to point it out if you'd like, but I am very well aware of my shortcomings in this area so you won't be telling me anything that I don't already know. I'm not horrid at it though and I feel like the smoker will be well sealed and isn't going to fall apart.

Got the legs tacked together and welded out.

Got the frame more or less done and set the tanks in place to get a visual.

It's starting to look like a smoker! I need to straighten out a couple of the legs as they warped a little due to the heat of welding and then I should be ready to weld the tanks in place and finish out the small piece of pipe that'll connect the two (it's just sitting there in the pic).

Hopefully I can sneak off for a bit next weekend and come down to the shop to work on it some more!

- Chris