Wood Chips with Pellets, anyone tried this?

[mike243]

Microwaving the pellets for the tubes helps them stay lit, not over 2 minites or they will catch fire and the wife gets upset for some reason lol

 

[auerjr]

I have a lone star pellet smoker on order. I ordered a few boxes of the wood chips to try when I receive it (still 6wks to go). This is right off lone star's website "These Wood chips have only been tested in the Lone Star Grillz pellet smokers, we can offer no advise on how these work in other brand pellet grills or smokers".

I will post my results when try it.

 

[02ebz06]

I have a lone star pellet smoker on order. I ordered a few boxes of the wood chips to try when I receive it (still 6wks to go). This is right off lone star's website "These Wood chips have only been tested in the Lone Star Grillz pellet smokers, we can offer no advise on how these work in other brand pellet grills or smokers".

I will post my results when try it.

Mine is being built right now. Probably get ship notice early next week.
Been a looooong 14 weeks.
I didn't order the chips because I was skeptical.
After seeing videos and pictures of the chips, they look like a smaller chip, so I think they should work OK.
But as you said, only for LSG grills. It has a short 8" open auger that is the key to them working.

 

[bill1]

I have a lone star pellet smoker on order. I ordered a few boxes of the wood chips to try when I receive it (still 6wks to go). This is right off lone star's website "These Wood chips have only been tested in the Lone Star Grillz pellet smokers, we can offer no advise on how these work in other brand pellet grills or smokers"...

I'd sure love seeing a picture of these chips with a biz or credit card in the background for sense-of-scale.
Because I don't think your auger or drive mechanism is significantly different from everyone else's. I'm inclined to think these chips have been filtered/sieved down to only small sizes.

 

[02ebz06]

Because I don't think your auger or drive mechanism is significantly different from everyone else's.

The auger is definitely different than others that I know of (Blazin Grills, Memphis, CampChef).
Those all have a solid core auger.
Just Googled augers and grabbed these for examples.
The LSG Auger is hollow like first picture.
Second picture is of a solid core.
Not sure what 2nd one is from as the end is hollow. The grills I had were solid to the end.

 

[DougE]

I have trouble keeping my smoke tube and Wedgee lit even after torching them for a minute and am thinking about selling the CC for a better smoke.

I don't know why you are having issues keeping smoke tubes lit in the woodwind. I have the SG24 and burn tubes in it with no problem. The cook chambers, vent stack, etc are the same design on the 2 grills. The woodwind has 4 probes instead of 2 like mine and fancier trim. Other than that, they are pretty much the same.

 

[Chris_in_SoCal]

Not sure what 2nd one is from as the end is hollow. The grills I had were solid to the end.

Pit Boss/Louisiana Grills

 

[BaldEagleOne]

I don't know why you are having issues keeping smoke tubes lit in the woodwind. I have the SG24 and burn tubes in it with no problem. The cook chambers, vent stack, etc are the same design on the 2 grills. The woodwind has 4 probes instead of 2 like mine and fancier trim. Other than that, they are pretty much the same.

I keep the flame on the tube for a minute and the Wedgee for 2 minutes. Yet 95% of the time they go out. HOw do you lite yours?

 

[DougE]

I keep the flame on the tube for a minute and the Wedgee for 2 minutes. Yet 95% of the time they go out. HOw do you lite yours?

I dunno, just hold the torch on the end of the tube until I have a good flame going and let it burn that way a few minutes. Blow the flame out, shut the lid on the cook chamber and the tube smolders away for the rest of the cook. I don't time it at all ...... just get it burning good before blowing the flame out.

 

[DougE]

I also run the tubes with a small piece of angle iron under the lit end.

 

[BaldEagleOne]

Thank you guys. Appreciate the advice. BTW, just smoked a Picanha for the first time following Jeff's recipe, and it turned out perfectly medium rare. It is a very tasty piece of meat.

 

[bill1]

I also run the tubes with a small piece of angle iron under the lit end.

I think they'll burn better putting the lit end down and the angle up on the end point. Unless you're trying for a little less smoke.
For the people having trouble keeping tubes lit, you're not alone. It frequently takes two lightings for mine to truly stay lit. I never put them in right away but let them idle a while on a nearby brick until I'm sure they're off and running. They usually stay lit then.

 

[bill1]

The auger is definitely different...

The hollow ones are definitely easier to make, and once you get chips-larger-than-pellets into them you can get bigger stuff to propagate to the burn pot, but the problem is getting the wood from the hopper into the auger mechanism in the first place without jamming. If anything the hollow ones are worse at that if they have round edges that can't cut. (If you watch the last handful of pellets feed into these pellet machines, you'll often see one get sheared in two on the forward end of the feed.) Slicing through the occasionally errant piece is not so easy with chips, esp if they're heading in "cross-cut" instead of "rip".
I'd love to see how small you have to make chips to get them to reliably feed into either style auger. I'd love to try a bag, but not at the expense of having to repair an auger mechanism.
Some folks get fine smoke from just sawdust, but in general, I'm not sure smoking wood scales to small sizes without some flavor penalty. And I think that's why adding a split to a pile of embers in an offset may be inherently better than doing the same thing with wood splits the size of pellets in a can-size crucible. I'd love someone to make a pellet machine that has everything (pellets, augers, burn pots) scaled up by 3x. Even with good controls, the temp variation may be worse (like in an offset) but the smoke flavor could possibly be better. But that's a big ask. Pellet sizes got set by the heating fuel industry long before Traeger adopted the technology. A DIY guy could do just a large auger and burnpot and use normal chips instead of formed pellets, and that DIY guy could be me, but I just don't see how you get chips to feed reliably into the auger and if you have to baby-sit the process, you might as well get an offset.