Anyone cut a grill grate in half? Stability?

grilling24x7

grilling24x7

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Hey guys,
I have a pit barrel cooker and want to tailgate this weekend. For space purposes I would like to hang sausages from one rebar and then have about 20 drum sticks cooking flat on the grate. I think I might be able to use bolt cutters to remove some of the "grates."

My question is: has anyone cut a grill grate before? Will I lose stability if I take out about 1/3 of the grates? Maybe leave the one central grate?

Photo attached - the yellow lines show the direction of the grates I want to cut out so I can hang.

I already did the measurement and you can't hang sausages on top of the grate, they wouldn't hang right. Also, this would allow something like ribs on the right and ABTs on the left. And part of this is just because its awesome to hang stuff and I have an extra (WSM grate) that I can easily cut up.

John
 

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I think you would still have a plenty rigid grate. Just make sure when you cut it, the welds where the straight bars meet the ring are still intact.
 
I've cut out grates on a weber 22 like that before. I used a jig saw and it worked fine. Leave the outer ring and just cut the individual grates you want removed.
 
Like mentioned, leave the outer ring, I'd take out all the cross bars from the first yellow marker to the right outside ring so you have room to swing the meat in and out without it getting hung up and dropping into the pit.
 
No problem. Leave the center support and the last two cross pieces it's welded to (exactly the way you marked it), and you'll have plenty of support remaining. I'm not a mechanical engineer, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night...
 
Probably OK unless you plan to put a lot of weight on the grate.

Another alternative would be to get a hinged grate and flip the hinged portions over. You would get some space on either side for hanging your sausage. :heh: :rolleyes:
 
Sounds like you can cut it... But could you also not use some hooks and hang the sausage side to side between the rebar? Loop it around or something.
 
i like the idea of getting a weber hinged grate. But i certainly understand the desire to use what you already have.
 
Here's the update to this. It was a great success. The grate cut easily and I hung polish sausage on one side and cooked chicken lollipops on the other. Ideally I would have cooked ribs but this was a tailgate and ribs would have pushed our time too close to the game.

Here are a few photos, more description is posted here: http://www.grilling24x7.com/pbcmod.shtml.

PBCmod2.jpg


PBCmod4.jpg


I think this is a pretty cool Pit Barrel Cooker grate modification.

Cheers!

John
 
charcoal tending

I would like to cut my grate in half on my weber so I can add more wood and charcoal. Advice?
 
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