backwoods style build finished with q-view

My current smoker is a UDS I built a few years ago and I love it but it just doesn't have the capacity I wanted so a few weeks I got a wild hare up my butt about building a new smoker and after leaving some drawings laying around for the wife to conveniently find she gave me the approval I decided on a backwoods style because this year has been colder than I can remember here in Minnesota so I wanted something insulated and efficient. So after scouring the web for as many pics and build threads that I could find and set about at drawing up my own plans.

The cook chamber dimensions are 18" wide by 24" deep and 22" tall and currently has 6 racks spaced 3" apart. the firebox is 12" tall the charcoal basket is 16"x22"x8" and will hold about 35 lbs of Kingsford because I wanted to hold as much charcoal as possible so that I could smoke while I am at work for 12 hours and not have to ask the wife to refill the charcoal

The main framework is 2"x1" 14 gauge tubing the smoke stack is 4"x2" 11 gauge and the sheet metal is 16 gauge hot rolled (I should have spent the extra $5 on cold rolled) the rails, grate and charcoal box frame are all 3/4" angle iron all the material added up to 3 sheets of 16 gauge sheet 28 feet of 2"x1" tube 4 feet of 4"x2" tube and 90 feet of 3/4" angle and about 4 feet of 1"x1" tube. total cost for the build including steel,hardware, gaskets, and insulation came to about $500. Make sure you call around to check prices for youre steel the two places I checked were about 40% diffrence on cost.

I wasn't the best at remembering to take pics to document the build but i did take some. Sorry for the blurry pics but my phone is a POS.







































Here you can see the intake and the guru port I wanted to build in. the intake is a 2-1/2" coupling cut to 1-1/2" long and tack welded some flat bar to the back side and threaded to accept the 1/4-20 bolt on the back of the damper. Everybody told me to just use a 2" ball valve with an adapter but that would have added quite a bit of cost to the build and I also didnt want stuff sticking out the sides. I machined the inside of a pipe to 1.22" and welded it in to the side next to my other intake and made a kill plug for it and sice I dont have a guru yet I mad an adapter that will stay in my pitmaster iq110 and fit into the guru port.

Then came the fun part. On Thursday I got her fired up for the seasoning run. I sprayed her down with vegetable oil then I loaded up about 10 pounds of lump and and warmed her up to about 125 then filled the water pan with boiling water and let her come up to about 250 where she sat for the next 7 hours while I was at work.

Friday the wife said she wanted burnt ends for the first meal so i told I had never made a brisket and I should go with somthing a little easier for the first cook. then she told me she wanted burnt ends and since she gave me permission to spend the money on the build I obliged. So I headed to restaurant depot to pick up a brisket and since she said she wanted me to make up some more breakfast sausage I got some butts while I was there and I would use one of them for pulled pork.

So for the cook I went with a 10.5 lbs brisket and an 8.5 lbs butt. I rubbed the brisket with a salt pepper garlic mixture and made up some big bald bbq rub that my brother in law made up last week.




I then got the cooker fired back up at about 11:00 so I could throw them on at 12:00 but she took forever to get up to temp so i didnt get the meat on until about 1:30 am

here is a pic after the foil in the morning



The butt was cooked to 200 and the brisket was at 195 and they were both done at exactly the same time at about 1:30 pm when i brought them in to set in the oven at 170 until dinner time.
After an hour or so I seperated the point from the flat for burnt ends and refoiled and put the flat in the oven. I cut the point into cubes and added some ken davis sauce in a pan and put them back on the cooker for a couple hours.







The brisket was great but I think I could have gone a few more degrees the first few slices wer really tender but towards the middle it wasnt as tender, not tough but not what it should have been. all in all I think it turned out really well for my first brisket and my first time with a water cooker and my first time on a non UDS smoker.

no anti tip I think i will add more rails inbetween the ones there now to give me more options for spaceing. right now theyt are at 3" and I will add some to make them 1.5" and that should take care of the tipping

i guess the closest size would be the competitor.

Bludawg said:

I cringed when I saw 3 ft of snow IN the OTS man give that thing some love.

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what makes it even worse is that I haven't used the Weber in years and that is the flat lid off of my UDS the Weber lid pretty much sits permanently on the UDS. If I am going to cook hot and fast I will use mu gas grill I like the charcoal taste but it is just way to much work for some steaks or burgers.