Ugly Drum Smoker

ON THE FARM said:

YES THEY ARE ZINC COATED!!!!

use a charcoal starter chiminy with 10 or so briqets in it, put in your parts and burn the zinc off of them.
i have done this many times with nuts and bolts.

Click to expand...

I took my mapp gas torch and heated everything till it was glowing red, then scrubbed them with a steel brush... Hope that's enough...!!!

The red liner will come out, you just have to get the drum hot enough. I drilled 3 3/4 inch holes in the bottom and hooked up a leaf blower to one of the holes to force air into the drum. Just throwing wood in the drum and lighting it wont get it to the temps to burn all the paint off let alone remove the liner. About an hour into the burn, the drum was glowing completely orange. Not one trace of paint or liner left. Looked like blued steel on the outside. You just have to use a lot of wood, and some forced induction, lol.

Got things going and threw my first fattie on there. Its stuffed with cream cheese, onions, orange peppers, and garlic... I'm taking it over to my Moms house as a appetizer for dinner. Hope it comes out ok...

Did you first flatten the edge of the webber lid and then weld the new wider flat piece to it?

Babyboomerboy said:

I posted pictures of my just finished UDS on a separate thread and several people commented on my solution for getting a Weber lid to fit. Therefore I decided to post it here on the Mother of all threads for UDS builders. I read all the posts on this thread and a lot of people were having trouble getting the lid to fit their barrels. Some people hammered the top of the barrel to flatten the rim so the lid would fit. Some people flattened the Weber rim and then bent it over the barrel to get it to fit. When I flattened the rim of my Weber lid it just covered the top of the barrel and I didn’t have enough lid left to bend it over the side of the barrel. So my solution to the problem was to weld a strip of sheet metal around the edge of the lid. The first thing I did was to cut the sheet metal into a strip and then tack weld it together using the barrel as a form. Then I welded the loop of sheet metal to the lid. Now the lid fits over the barrel and is easy to take off and put on. I hope this helps some of you that are having the same problem with the Weber lid and a 55 gallon barrel. Happy smoking

Click to expand...

sdb25 said:

Dude, you need some high temps to burn the zinc off. You really don't need to worry about it though. People make a big deal out of the zinc, and unless you are breathing the fumes while welding on it, it really poses no risk. If some zinc manages to get on your food, it's fine. You aren't going to get toxic levels of zinc, even if you just ground up and ate the conduit nuts themselves.

I'm sure there will be several people saying otherwise, but I'd like to see the evidence.

Click to expand...

I agree. I understand how some folks are worried by what they read on here. If they are that worried about the conduit nuts they might as well just stay in bed in the morning and never leave home.

sbd25 & Emil.

thank you thank you thank you. It's nice to see somebody not buying into the zinc hysteria. There's not enough in the hardware we use to cause any problems, unless you're doing a Max Klinger and trying to eat a Jeep's worth...

And for the dreaded red liner concern... I challenge anyone to submit info for the thread showing that the fumes off one contain particulate that is dangerous if ingested. I have yet to find anything that makes me believe this is worth worrying about. Especially once you have seasoned the interior of the drum. A good coating of bacon grease and some heat & smoke, and the liner is sealed.
The only info I can find ( http://ijt.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/7/2/201 ) on the breakdown of one of these liners is that there is a "possibility" that the fumes "may" contain some irritants if inhaled. "Carbon monoxide appears to be the major toxicant produced by the combustion of phenolics. Sensory irritation as indicated by reduced respiratory rate may be due to formaldehyde production; however, sensory irritation is lower than that produced by wood"

To me, there is more danger in that stogie you're puffing on, or in the process of driving back and forth to work, than there is in one of these liners that people get bent out of shape over. I think it's just an excuse to play with fire. Which, I'll admit, is fun.

Did some thighs on my lined UDS tonight and ate them about an hour ago. Still alive and kicking here...

Otis...Gotta Love It.....Love your maverick style

Gotta Love It said:

Did some thighs on my lined UDS tonight and ate them about an hour ago. Still alive and kicking here...

Click to expand...

THis should be interesting..... at 4 am when you wake up and dash to the TOILET!!!!!

Yeah--I don't really think that's going to happen.

My first fattie and the first thing cooked on my UDS.... Came out great. Te only comments I got was that people wanted a sauce to go on it...

Pigdog--it's that "different drummer" thing I've always been cursed/blessed with. Just have a hard time going along with the crowd just to do so... I've found "right" and "wrong" to more and more a perspective deal as opposed to an absolute. Especially when it comes to Q. Outside of food safety, I haven't come across any absolutes. For everything I've been told or read that you "can't" do, there is somebody else who has been "doin' it that way fer years an' never had a problem"...

I even put my cooking grid only 22 inches from the bottom of the charcoal basket (because I put my thermomter just below the grate. 24 inches would've put the thermometer face against the rib of the drum, not allowing it to be screwed in tight without bending the head of the thermometer) instead of 24. Cooks just fine. AND, at 22 inches, for some reason the temp difference between the side and the center is less than on my other UDS with the 24 inch spacing. Did the 2 inches make that much difference (that's what she said...), or is it just a difference in drums? Don't know until I make my 3rd one. It'll be 22 inches also, if possible.

hahahaha, your a rebel Otis....

I say go with what works. If you can avoid zinc I would just to be safe, if you can get a barrel without a liner I would. If you can't make it work and smoke some meat. I did my first barrel so that I was 24" from the charcoal and it only left me 7" to the lid. I'm making another one now that is more like 21" or so, so I can do a beer can chicken.

Although it's not that hard to subscribe to the "better safe that sorry" school of thought with regard to zinc and either strip off the zinc or use SS, which I'll likely also do (and because I prefer the look of SS), I do like to get to the bottom of issues like this to satisfy my own curiosity...

Hazardous zinc oxide fumes are only produced when zinc boils at 907 deg. C, or 1664 F. The only thing on the UDS that could conceivably get this hot is the charcoal basket and the bolts that hold it up. There's no way that zinc-plated hardware on the drum itself could get hot enough to create zinc oxide vapors... if it's not brighter than bright cherry red, it's not hot enough to burn the zinc plating off and release fumes.

Zinc oxide is only hazardous if inhaled as a vapor in significant quantities, as in welding galvanized steel, and is actually classified as "generally recognized as safe" as a food additive by the FDA, so I can't imagine that zinc oxide fumes sticking to your food are going to do anything to you. As someone said earlier on here, it's an ingredient in daily multivitamins and sunscreen.

One thing I hadn't heard (but is mentioned in the first link below) is that if you do get "metal fume fever" from welding galvanized steel and trying to get high from the fumes, although you may feel like crap at the time, once the symptoms go away there are apparently no lasting effects. I'm not willing to count on that, but it's interesting nonetheless...

Sources:
http://www.periodictable.com/ZincSafety.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_oxide
http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/wtc/analysis/fires/metcolor.htm

-Rodney

Some candle wicks are made of zinc. As stated above, zinc vapor is the problem, not molten zinc. It has to get pretty hot to boil.

Boshizzle said:

Some candle wicks are made of zinc. As stated above, zinc vapor is the problem, not molten zinc. It has to get pretty hot to boil.

Click to expand...

And zinc's melting point is 787 F, which is *still* far from what the drum itself will ever see in anything but a burnout...

Just a reminder, this is the UDS thread. Not the "zinc is gonna kill you" thread.

just sayin'

I think the safety discussions are very relevant to the UDS thread. Just look at some of the unsafe things that some people have been prevented from doing already in this thread such as using the drum after painting the inside, etc. People need the information so they can make an informed decision. Zinc or no zinc, paint on the inside or no paint, remove liner or keep liner, galvanized charcoal basket or not, etc.

Those things are as important, or more so, than whether or not you put an access door on it or a Weber grill lid.

Agreed, Boshizzle. This should be discussed intelligently instead of just having the same "Danger Will Robinson" message passed on like a couple old ladies talking over the fence. Just because something is "accepted" as true doesn't mean that it isn't worth taking a closer look at from time to time. And I stand by my statement that I have yet to see anything that makes me think the practices we've been discussing are harmful to us. When somebody posts something other than opinion, I will reconsider. And I will continue to put my two cents in for no other reason than to just maybe get folks to think for themselves and do a little research instead of blindly following the herd.

My stance is that the owners of the site (any Q site, actually) don't want to be on record in any way shape or form looking as if they condone a practice which "may be" harmful if Jupiter aligns with Mars. Sorta like something causing cancer in rats if they bathe in it long enough, it's easier to say "No! No! Don't do that!" than it is to put the info out there and let people make their own decision.