This landed in my lap after a friend bought a pellet grill because he was tired of babysitting his offset smoker. It's heavy (150lbs?). Metal is around 3/16" for thickness for all the parts which I imagine means it's older. When I was shopping for a smoker a few years ago I went and looked around (did not know about quality brands at the time, and returned with a Vision Pro komodo). Ran the specs through the calculator and it's off by a good margin. The smokestack is woefully short and tiny, the fire chamber is way oversized, the pass through is large (but not too far off), and the intake door just needs a good seal and tightening.
So what to do with an older decent quality offset smoker that can fit some decent meat on it? I'm going to restore, fix, and modify it to cook some stuff.
Building/Rebuilding list
- Frame is really short. Bumping up the smoker by 6 inches will help with my lower back pain. Also getting some offroad wheels and widening the base some to help with stability. Also a better frame will allow me to weld all the holes up and add an exterior shelf somewhere.
- New Grates and slides needed. There will be only one level to this but maybe I could add some hooks on the ceiling of the smoker to hang things from in lieu of having the cooking grate in the smoker.
- Smoke stack is way too small/short. Calculation says 24" @ 4" pipe. Luckily my neighbor just threw away a basketball goal. Since I'm ditching it I'll make a reverse flow and call it a day. My neighbor is throwing out a basketball hoop and it looks like 4" pipe.
- I am welding the top lid to the coal box shut. The side door is big enough to slide any charcoal basket into it and have space to spare. I hear the one with the baffles inside is very nice.
- I'll think about making a firebox for the smoker out of 1/4 or 3/8 but I think that will depend on what the metal shop has in scrap pieces.
- Needs thermometer which is a quick add. I found a covered hole on main door that would get the peak temp inside the chamber. It would be good to get one a little lower on the other side to get grate temp.
I suppose the best thing is that I can't find evidence where the outer skin has been compromised due to heat.
