The wood racks will stop seeping, mine did by the time we had the 2nd smoke, I draped a little foil over them to keep it off of the meat while it was coming out.
Yea they dripped for a bit. Just depends on how much sap is in the wood. But it was after a few cooks.
You might look into lining your heat chamber where the burner is with some duroc cement board, it works well in protecting the plywood. Or even tiling the area, I have seen a few like that.
When I was doing the research before the build I was told not to use duroc due to the fibers in it may be not food safe when heated. So I lined the bottom and sides with heat treated tiles. I was actually a bit quick on the draw and did a burn out without the tiles and chared the bottom under the burner a bit when I put the skillet on top.
I like the rack system, but you will find that even at 200 degrees the wood glue won't hold up long, screws are definitely the way to go, its not as 'pretty' but I cut some thin strips of wood and used a brad nailer to cover them up, can't notice them, and it looks like some extra trim.
I did use a small pice of scrap under the ends of each bracket and then screwed them from the outside, not sure if all of the pictures made it. I used a little wood putty to cover the scrww heads.
Your heat shield may be a bit much with that burner, I dunno, I ended up just sitting two disposable aluminum pans across my lower rack to catch the drippings, got them at the dollar store, also got some of the little wire racks they sell there to place under them for some extra support. Remember with the wood, you really don't want any item retaining a huge amount of heat, it will eventually give you what I had with the burnout. While the cook chamber might not be more than 300 degrees I would bet that piece of solid metal above the burner is a lot hotter.
I ran a couple pices of metal rebar to set the metal plate on. The plate has about a 3" gap all the way around it to allow for air flow. When doing large cooks I will also place 2 disposable pan on it to catch the drippings. The only issue I have had the wood getting too hot was when we first started using it and we had the wrong amount of air and the wrong regulator. I finally was able to get the correct specs on the burner and the pressure it needed. With it burning too hot and not ablento fine tune it and too much air the wood chunks would ignite and the temps would shoot way up to almost 400. We now have that fixed and have not seen any changes to the fire box area. But I do like the idwa of the duroc for the next one we build. This one may get donated to our church. Depending on the size of the butts, I can cook 25-30 in one shot. They are looking for a large cooker that is also flexible.
I definitely defer to the guys with more experience, just passing on a few things I learned with my build.
We have been using this smokehouse for about 1.5 years now and have run over 1500 lbs of meat through it. I am still learning from what others post about theirs. I have been looking at yours and am very intersted in how yours works with charcoal/wood. I am going to do some research the duroc because I am looking at some old food trams we have at work that are metal and the duroc to do a first layer before doing an outer skin of plywood would be a nice option.
