safety concern with new RF smoker

[bigsmoken]

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• bigsmoken
• Dec 28, 2013

so this is my smoker that I got operational not to long ago and my concern after thinking hard about it (and I proably produced more smoke than this does) is that I bought the metal, welded it together, did a test run with it. Is there anything on the metal that I should worry about getting off before feeding anyone meat from this thing..is there anything that is gonna leach out of the metal when heated or is it good to go after a couple of times of heating..

 

[smokejumper]

Hello bigsmoken.
Can't really tell much from the picture, but if the firebox is made of galvanized metal, it is dangerous.
The smoke chamber should be burned out with a hot fire (build the fire in the smoke chamber) to remove any chemical residues.
We would need more details of how you built the smoker to be able to offer better advice.
Is the RF plate removable?
Is the RF plate galvanized?
What abouit the yellow box on top?

 

[ribwizzard]

That little guy in the bottom of the pic looks worried!

 

[bigsmoken]

thats actually a happy pug...no the rf plate is non removable and the FB and the Lid.(yellow box) is diamond plate...I'm not sure if its galvanized...I can call the steel place to find out. but if it is how should I get rid of that stuff? just make a crazy hot fire in it to burn it all off? if the fb had it then its def gone its starting to rust..

 

[lendecatural]

Is the FB and the yellow lid made from the same diamond plate? The FB does not look like galvanized, it would have been a real bitch to get a decent weld due to the heavy zinc on galvanized plate. You can use a scribe to scratch it on the inside of the CC and see if you get a dull or shiny metal look. I haven't seen a propane tank with galvanized on the inside but I haven't seen the inside of very many. The exhaust pipe looks like wood heater chimney flue and they are sometimes galvanized. When I HAVE to weld galvanized, I use and angle grinder to grind off as much zinc as possible from the surface and then stay upwind from the weld smoke.

 

[bigsmoken]

well If i'm going by that then it wasent galvanized as it welded together real nice and the lid and the fb are out of the same stuff...the tank isnt galvanized and I'm sure the stack is but I wasent to worried about that. But only because in my mind I thought that since the air was leaving through the stack I dont have to worry about the fumes getting onto the food......

 

[lendecatural]

Sounds like you are good to go, the cook chamber shouldn't be hot enough to cause any fumes from outside of the exhaust stack. How do you like the smoker? Does it cook and hold temperature good?

 

[bigsmoken]

She is a bit of a coal hog but other than that she is a beast.....she gets up to temp quick about 250-290 within about 30 min...when the lid is opened she gets back up within a couple of min. and even when I open the fb to add charcoal it dosent dip but a few degrees. I actually put a wood shelf about 7 inches above the bottom of the charcoal basket and it works amazinly it smokes like a fiend. I really think it was the way I put the fb together that has a lot to do with it. I couldn't be more happy with it.