After pricing commercial smokers and calling private builders and even pricing raw material to build it myself, I finally decided to contract Craig Bell of BellFab to fulfill my purchase. But as you'll see, I couldn't leave well enough alone...
As you can see the handle is a 1"tubing and pretty long to gain leverage... but honestly, leveraging 1,000lbs is a little absurd without a forklift or something. I endured the BS of moving this thing around a few times and decided to add a double wheeled pivoting trailer jack to the middle of the handle. This proved to be pretty usefull in that I felt as if I was utilizing about 1/5 the strength to mobilize this beast. After a few moves with the jack in place the reciever end of the handle's slot start bending in front of the gusset. This isn't a normal issue for Craig's smokers but my picky ass wanted 3/8" tube and 1/2" firebox... ya, heavy! So I devised a plan and here's what I came up with:
Some welding...
Some plasma cutting... (love this toy)
and voila...
a multi-height double caster (300lbs each) setup that I can adjust to center or front depending on the need (they have to be out in front when I winch it onto trailer)
And store them high when not in use. You can kinda see the extra gusset I added to the handle receiver too (1" tubing)
My meat pictures give it away a little. I have also added some other gizzys to help get some real big things in there Next, I'm adding a rottisseri (I'm drunk and that spelling still looks horribly wrong, oh well!) that will go perpendicular to the cook chamber, we'll see how that works out.