My UDS is done

[nate_46]

Finally I have finished building my UDS. It has been a long time coming, but glad to be done. I have run a test smoke and I am amazed how well it performed. I wasn't shooting for the cheapest or most expensive, I just wanted something that would work for me.

I took a lot of ideas from other here so if you would like credit for part of the build, speak up! Here goes.....


Here is the overall view. The dome lid was from a el cheapo Walmart grill.

Of course I saved the hinges cause where do you put the lid while loading?

This is the bottom grate again used from the grill I purchased.

With the top grate purchased from Lowe's.

Saved the latch as well.

Made my fire basket out of expanded metal and the charcoal grate from the grill. Pizza plate under the basket.

The air intake worked quite well.

Of course I made a pipe to hold the rebar while not in use.

I have burned it once and liked the performance. I used about 9 lbs of Kingsford blue with 4 pieces of apple chunk. It maintained great temps for 6 hours without any problems. After that the temps started to drop off slowly so I closed the intake and the exhaust and went to bed. I have enough charcoal left over to fill a chimney starter for the next smoke.

Question for all the UDS users, do you use a full bag of Kingsford blue to get smoking times greater that 6-8 hours?

Anyway, I hope to generate great q-view with this baby. If it works this great all the time my SNP might not get much use!!

Thanks for viewing.....

 

[mr mac]

Sweet! I love the air intake and the rebar idea to hold the grates! Very clever!

 

[jamesb]

Nice looking UDS! If you added a couple more tabs you wouldn't need the re-bar... The grates themselfs can support a pretty good load.

As for burn times, I can get all night burns on ~10lbs of Kingsford. Longest burn was over 24 hrs last summer on a single load.

 

[ronp]

Nice build, thanks for sharing. Good luck with it.

 

[alx]

nice work.i need one....

 

[nate_46]

I took the rebar from someone else, I think RickW. Anyway I figured the grates could hold the weight, but when I start smoking sausages I will have somewhere to hang them.

Thanks for the replys!!

 

[jamesb]

I hadn't thought of that... Good idea!

 

[scarbelly]

Nice looking build - I really want one of these - nice feautures with the rebar

 

[jlmacc]

Looks like you did a good job on it!I like the rebar idea for hanging purposes also.I really need to get building one of these myself.

 

[solaryellow]

Nice job!

 

[BandCollector]

Looks like a great deal of thought went into the build......great job and good luck with it.

John

 

[rickw]

Very good job, looks like ya put a lot of thought into it. You're gonna love that drum.

 

[rickw]

We were typing the same thing at the same time.

 

[morkdach]

nice build thanks for sharing now lets smoke something

 

[ol' smokey]

Nice build Nate. I too have an intake like yours, works great.

To answer your question about burn times....
For shorter smokes I use a smaller charcoal basket, I find it burns better than the larger one. I use one chimney of unlit charcoal. On top of that some lit stuff. It's about 6 lbs altogether amd that gets me around 7 hours at 225°.
For the longer smokes the large charcoal basket and about 15 lbs of charcoal gets me way over 14 hours.

Hope this helps.

 

[blue]

Same here! I get a good long burn off of 10 pounds and still have some unused charcoal in the basket when the cook is over.

Great looking build...there is so much I like about it especially the air intake.

 

[warthog]

Really nice looking build. Just picked up a 55g drum last Saturday. Getting ready to start the project.

 

[beer-b-q]

Nice Job, Looks Great...

 

[chefrob]

nice build........i like these things!

 

[mballi3011]

Now thats a nice Uds for sure and Thanks for the step by step views. The only one you left out was the cooking parts. But I'm sure that they will follow soon enough.