unixadm
Take a breath!
Yesterday I took delivery of an Assassin 28 and today was a Craigslist purchase. I picked up a 2011 Lang 36 Patio with the stainless steel chamber for $560 and that included both shelves, a nice weed burner and a BBQ poker. I thought I did pretty damn good. I'm in California and finding a name brand stick burner on CL is pretty rare. I was looking at a Lang 84 Deluxe when this one showed up. The 36 is better for me since I just wanted to experiment with stick burning.
My day started at 5:30 AM when I woke up to start preparing for my trip. Loaded up my 4Runner V8 with straps, moving blankets, water and some basic tools. All told the old lady still managed to exceed 15 MPG on the round trip which was almost 200 miles.
The mission, pick this up in Novato, CA:
Stopped at U-Haul at 8:30 AM and they had the trailer for me... although it was pretty beat down compared to the last one I rented:
Made it to Novato pretty quickly because I beat the traffic into the Bay Area. I kept it around 55-60 all the way there. I didn't take pictures when I got there because the guy was a lot bigger than me and I didn't want to be weird. So fast forward 200 miles and about four hours and I arrived back at the house with this:
I didn't take pictures of the next part, but this unit had a VERY poor fitting door - I mean like you can see into the chamber from the corners of the door. A medium sized crescent wrench to grab the metal and a long 2x4 to block open the door fixed about 60-70% of the issues. The bottom edge still needs some work, but it's MUCH better than before. With a bit more work I'll have it 90%. I don't know if it came that way or if it's a symptom of the stainless or prior owner abuse. The welding and assembly of the door is pretty bad to be fair, but the rest of the unit looks pretty good. I mean you can see the handle on the door is taller on one side than the other because the handle round bar was bent incorrectly or at least it should have been cut down to be the same height from the door. It's not, it's about 3/8" taller on the right side. Oops. It's like they had one "so-so" guy welding doors and another good welder doing the rest.
Hit with with my mini-weed burner and then pressured washed the interior and exterior. It was pretty dirty and cruddy, so the inside and outside got a good 45 minutes worth of 2,500 PSI lovin. After her bath:
Now I don't have much in the way of firewood, so it's lump and a mix some some hardwood chunks which I didn't like and grocery store firewood for this run. I'm ordering wood this coming week. I got it fired up with TBS right off the bat. I guess playing with fire when I was a kid has paid off!
Pretty close between the ET-732 and the door thermometer:
Now I did the double steam clean and got even more gunk out of the cooker. My poor lawn is black from the earlier pressure washing:
Coat of Canola oil:
I'll coat the chamber when it cools off - I didn't want to get much oil on the exterior to save me time in degreasing tomorrow when I repaint it.
I'm going to let it burn itself out now but she's holding steady at around 248 degrees. I'll probably mess around with the dampers a bit more before calling it a night. It's obvious when you choke the fire off too much - sorry neighbors! There is no other cooker that puts out that "smell" though. Oh that reminds me, I'm gonna throw an onion in there. I read about that and I have one that has been sitting in the basket a little longer than I'd like. However the smell from the smoke of this thing just really makes it for me. You just don't get that with pellets - I might get some of it with the Assassin 28. This will not be my primary cooker, but one when I want to drink beer and play with fire.
Oh and the guy sold it because he didn't like having to tend the fire and is looking to go pellets. I told him I've been on pellets and wanted to tend a fire. Go figure! haha.
So next up:
My day started at 5:30 AM when I woke up to start preparing for my trip. Loaded up my 4Runner V8 with straps, moving blankets, water and some basic tools. All told the old lady still managed to exceed 15 MPG on the round trip which was almost 200 miles.
The mission, pick this up in Novato, CA:
Stopped at U-Haul at 8:30 AM and they had the trailer for me... although it was pretty beat down compared to the last one I rented:
Made it to Novato pretty quickly because I beat the traffic into the Bay Area. I kept it around 55-60 all the way there. I didn't take pictures when I got there because the guy was a lot bigger than me and I didn't want to be weird. So fast forward 200 miles and about four hours and I arrived back at the house with this:
I didn't take pictures of the next part, but this unit had a VERY poor fitting door - I mean like you can see into the chamber from the corners of the door. A medium sized crescent wrench to grab the metal and a long 2x4 to block open the door fixed about 60-70% of the issues. The bottom edge still needs some work, but it's MUCH better than before. With a bit more work I'll have it 90%. I don't know if it came that way or if it's a symptom of the stainless or prior owner abuse. The welding and assembly of the door is pretty bad to be fair, but the rest of the unit looks pretty good. I mean you can see the handle on the door is taller on one side than the other because the handle round bar was bent incorrectly or at least it should have been cut down to be the same height from the door. It's not, it's about 3/8" taller on the right side. Oops. It's like they had one "so-so" guy welding doors and another good welder doing the rest.
Hit with with my mini-weed burner and then pressured washed the interior and exterior. It was pretty dirty and cruddy, so the inside and outside got a good 45 minutes worth of 2,500 PSI lovin. After her bath:
Now I don't have much in the way of firewood, so it's lump and a mix some some hardwood chunks which I didn't like and grocery store firewood for this run. I'm ordering wood this coming week. I got it fired up with TBS right off the bat. I guess playing with fire when I was a kid has paid off!
Pretty close between the ET-732 and the door thermometer:
Now I did the double steam clean and got even more gunk out of the cooker. My poor lawn is black from the earlier pressure washing:
Coat of Canola oil:
I'll coat the chamber when it cools off - I didn't want to get much oil on the exterior to save me time in degreasing tomorrow when I repaint it.
I'm going to let it burn itself out now but she's holding steady at around 248 degrees. I'll probably mess around with the dampers a bit more before calling it a night. It's obvious when you choke the fire off too much - sorry neighbors! There is no other cooker that puts out that "smell" though. Oh that reminds me, I'm gonna throw an onion in there. I read about that and I have one that has been sitting in the basket a little longer than I'd like. However the smell from the smoke of this thing just really makes it for me. You just don't get that with pellets - I might get some of it with the Assassin 28. This will not be my primary cooker, but one when I want to drink beer and play with fire.
Oh and the guy sold it because he didn't like having to tend the fire and is looking to go pellets. I told him I've been on pellets and wanted to tend a fire. Go figure! haha.
So next up:
- Repaint.
- Convert upper shelf to sliding.
- Build a charcoal basket. I'm going to use some of the nice angle iron that was part of the crate my Assassin 28 came in, plus expanded metal. Or I may plasma cut a 1/4" bottom plate for the box on my CNC table. Not sure yet.
- Paint the wheels black.
- Build a wood warming rack 12" above the firebox to preheat splits.
- Build a tool holder.
- Cook some good que!
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