V shaped fire management basket

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Paulie Walnuts 440

Meat Mopper
Original poster
Apr 17, 2020
169
66
Does anyone have for sale any V shaped fire baskets for wood smokers? Been waiting for lone Star to get them in stock and it's been weeks since they have and when k emailed them they said they aren't too sure when.
 
PW, morning.... I found a layer of fire brick in the bottom of the Fire Box held heat and kept the fire smoldering very well, even when small splits were added.....
I used the 1" fire brick.... That's all I had room for....
I built the fire right on the brick.....
 
This is my smoker... About 30+years in use... It has a 2 RPM drive motor w/5' 3/4" SS spit rod for pigs...
When I had a job, there was a 'physical' testing lab where the tested everything we purchased as 'raw materials'... They cut ~1" off the ends of the brick so they would be uniform for the tests and calculations.... I grabbed them for my home use...
The original bricks were ~8x4x2"..... and from different vendors.... that's where the difference entered the confusion....



My Wood Smoker3.jpg My Wood Smoker2.jpg My Wood Smoker.jpg My Wood Smoker33.jpg
 
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Are you interested in something like this?
 
Well ok then FB... All's I need is a few more pictures of the underneath side and I'm on my way to making one... Can ya help a feller out ??
 
I believe the advantage to a V basket is concentrated coals to the specific area due to the V shape rather than flat bottom and taking coals back into the middle to keep the coals centered so to speak. I believe it would be more fuel efficient as well. My theory that is hahahaha
 
Al... I like the theory of it... holding all the coals together (instead of spread out around the firebox)... Therefor holding more heat (think of the vortex)... So the addition of a new split ignites faster .. Thinking it should cut down on fuel consumption as well ... I don't know... I can build one and test me theory out ...
 
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It's not about the coals, well not ALL about the coals anyway.
It allows the sticks to be propped up to expose more of the wood to the air as opposed to on top of each other in a pile, which prevents large areas from lighting up.
Ideal fire configuration is for the sticks to start burning from the bottom with flames slowly licking up the sides.
This arrangement helps produce the clear blue smoke that we all seek.
As to coals production, too large a coal base will raise the cook grate temps and not allow addition of fresh wood until they burn off enough for the temp to drop.
Burning wood produces smoke (with luck clean blue smoke) and coals produce most of the heat and while we need both, the flavor comes mostly from wood smoke, not burning coals.
 
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It's not about the coals, well not ALL about the coals anyway.
It allows the sticks to be propped up to expose more of the wood to the air as opposed to on top of each other in a pile, which prevents large areas from lighting up.
Ideal fire configuration is for the sticks to start burning from the bottom with flames slowly licking up the sides.
This arrangement helps produce the clear blue smoke that we all seek.
As to coals production, too large a coal base will raise the cook grate temps and not allow addition of fresh wood until they burn off enough for the temp to drop.
Burning wood produces smoke (with luck clean blue smoke) and coals produce most of the heat and while we need both, the flavor comes mostly from wood smoke, not burning coals.

Cool theory, but LSG designed it to keep the hot coals concentrated under the wood as they burn down and dwindle in size. It's really not more complicated than that.
 
Just got this yesterday and it's pretty darn solid ..cant wait to use it
 

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