Took me 3 days to build mine, and another couple of weeks to fine tune it....Im still messing with it. Read up while you start the process. The burn out and clean out process is the same regardless of design. I had to burn mine 2x. Once upright, second time laying on its side to get the bottom 1/3. Then you gotta sand the carbon off inside n out. It's dirty, dirty. So have plenty of antifreeze handy...whiskey, rum....cocoa. Personally, to build a new one, I would go with 3-1" intakes, one capped, 2 valved. Lay your grate holes out in a 3 hole pattern. Use the charcoal grate from a 22" weber for the base of your firebox, this gives you a size that nearly fills up the drum at 17 1/2" round. My first firebox was 12" round and I get more even cookin with the bigger box. That was the biggest single upgrade I discovered. I also find the single 2" exhaust gave me solid temps. By the time I calculated cost for everything, drum, sandpaper, pipe nipples and knockout washers, stainless hardware, thermometer, paint, ball valves, cooking grates x2, charcoal grate and firebox, unibits, drillbits, misc. hardware and custom options I'm over 200 dollars. Maybe I'd buy a bigpoppasmoker. Half the fun is doing it yourself and talkin stories with your buddies over beers and ribs about getting the fire dept called because the burnout flames were ten ft tall.
