Hello friends.
Can't tell you the time I've spent on your wonderful forum. More of a reader than a writer as you can tell by my poor post count.
Anywho. I built a large-ish block smoker for doing whole hogs, large amounts of food for big party's, etc.
I'm mostly satisfied with the smoker for what it is, outside of the amounts of hours it takes to pre heat, but with a large cooking area, what can you do. I've done hogs, 2 dozen chickens, 15 racks of ribs on it. It does turn out nice food and drafts well.
I neglected to fill the void in the block with sand, admittedly. So that will be a priority before the next cook, which won't be until next year
My two questions are:
1. The bottom of my firebox is lined with 100 year old brick that used to line the streets of a local City. They do fantastic with the heat, but the surrounding cinder blicks do not.
Had I taken a picture after the most recent smoke, you will see about 80% of the blocks are cracked from the heat.
I know that fire brick exists, but I'd still have to have the cinder inlet and stacking all of that new brick in the firebox seems like it would take away a bunch of space, and fall in on itself when the stacks of it fell or the wood hit it,etc.
Question #2:
See the lid in the first pic? That's a 3/16 steel plate. Heavier than well... It's heavy. I'd like to devise some sort of lift system for the lid.
I installed handles before the cook, but they get insanely hot and the heat is so intense that I ended up having to drop the lid back on and it cracked all of my cap block.
In my head I can see installing eye bolts on the lid and having some sort of overhead method for gaining the leverage needed to lift the plate. It's here where I struggle.
I could cobble some garbage up in the end, but I figured I'd turn to smarter minds BEFORE I created the expensive, inefficient solution. Instead of after like I normally do.
Thanks for all of your attention and any input you may have!
Can't tell you the time I've spent on your wonderful forum. More of a reader than a writer as you can tell by my poor post count.
Anywho. I built a large-ish block smoker for doing whole hogs, large amounts of food for big party's, etc.
I'm mostly satisfied with the smoker for what it is, outside of the amounts of hours it takes to pre heat, but with a large cooking area, what can you do. I've done hogs, 2 dozen chickens, 15 racks of ribs on it. It does turn out nice food and drafts well.
I neglected to fill the void in the block with sand, admittedly. So that will be a priority before the next cook, which won't be until next year
My two questions are:
1. The bottom of my firebox is lined with 100 year old brick that used to line the streets of a local City. They do fantastic with the heat, but the surrounding cinder blicks do not.
Had I taken a picture after the most recent smoke, you will see about 80% of the blocks are cracked from the heat.
I know that fire brick exists, but I'd still have to have the cinder inlet and stacking all of that new brick in the firebox seems like it would take away a bunch of space, and fall in on itself when the stacks of it fell or the wood hit it,etc.
Question #2:
See the lid in the first pic? That's a 3/16 steel plate. Heavier than well... It's heavy. I'd like to devise some sort of lift system for the lid.
I installed handles before the cook, but they get insanely hot and the heat is so intense that I ended up having to drop the lid back on and it cracked all of my cap block.
In my head I can see installing eye bolts on the lid and having some sort of overhead method for gaining the leverage needed to lift the plate. It's here where I struggle.
I could cobble some garbage up in the end, but I figured I'd turn to smarter minds BEFORE I created the expensive, inefficient solution. Instead of after like I normally do.
Thanks for all of your attention and any input you may have!
Last edited:
