Ugly Drum Smoker

h20loo said:

I don't think you should have 100 degree difference between the two. I usually find 40 and then that goes down to about 20 on a long 225 cook. I would pull the 12" guage out 9" and see if it reads the same as your 3". 3-2-1 is long for ribs on a UDS. The UDS are like their owners- quicker than most!! At 250 I do 2 1/2 hrs and start checking. I seldom foil and when I have nice pull back and flex- then I'll sauce some of the ribs to taste and mop mine with a scotch/cider a few times.
UDS are easy cookers but liek anything good, they still do have individual quirks. Experience on them usually solves that.

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Ok,i followed your suggestion bu pulling the 12" gage out by 9". The temps did not match. So last night i removed both gages from the drum and did a boiling water test. Water boils at 212* right? The short stemed gage read 210* and the long stemed gage read 180*. So i adjusted it to also red 210*.

Today i pluged the hole for the short stemed gage with 2 washers,a nut and a bolt. i drilled a small hole, enough to insert the probe, as close to the center of the lid as i could without interfering with the exaust pipe. I als wanted to one of my didgitall gages in a block of wood at the same level as the 12" gage. The didgitall gages (the 2 that i bought)are only good from 0* to 250*. AAAARRRRRG.
Started some coal and watched both Gages. I was pleasently rurprized with the end result.

Both gages within 5*to 10*.

h20loo said:

Rodney- it doesn't matter if its a 6 inch hole- it only matters how much is open. My car has more HP than I could ever use but all that matters to my wife is how much I open 'er up. Justa touch and she stays happy. I don't find the 2" hole on my barrel hard to use and infact I prefer it to multiple holes and caps. I have the same intake on the egg and I don't find it hard to control on there either.
The neat thing about drums is you can do what ever you like and if it doesn't work then you can adjust it.

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If you don't care about having all of your usable intake throttle adjustment in the first 10% of the opening of the damper, sure, it doesn't matter if the hole is 6" in diameter. I'm just talking about adjustability here. It doesn't make sense to drive a car around daily and never be able to exceed 20% throttle without ripping the tires loose, and having to ever-so-carefully tweak an inlet damper because the fully-open damper area is much too large is no fun either. That's the only point I'm making.

Personally, I'd like an inlet setup where 50% open resulted in no more than 325 degrees or so. This would make damper settings more repeatable and less of a pain to adjust. Reason enough to revise an existing UDS? Nope. A worthwhile consideration when designing and building one? Definitely, IMHO. If a 2" inlet does this, I'll put a 2" inlet on the next one I build. If not, I'd go smaller. I do like the single inlet design, but didn't do it on my UDS because I wanted to be able to "compare notes" with other people while learning fire management.

"Personally, I'd like an inlet setup where 50% open resulted in no more than 325 degrees or so. This would make damper settings more repeatable and less of a pain to adjust. Reason enough to revise an existing UDS? Nope. A worthwhile consideration when designing and building one? Definitely, IMHO. If a 2" inlet does this, I'll put a 2" inlet on the next one I build. If not, I'd go smaller. I do like the single inlet design, but didn't do it on my UDS because I wanted to be able to "compare notes" with other people while learning fire management"

Never thought about that, I guess because that is pretty much what I have. After using the UDS for a while now I can pretty well set it and hit the temps I want as its coming up. Now that the weather is warm I find that the intakes for the drum and the egg are very similiar.
The 6" comment was not realistic but to make the point that it only matters what you have open to get the temp. I read on another forum where somebody had their lid off and could get 400 but when the lid was on they found the temp was dropping. They were convinced it was too small a fire mass and nothing to do with the 1/2" tapped intake.
Anyway, I hope you have as much fun and food success as I've had with my barrels. My son came home for the summer last week and he made his mother stop to pick up ribs and peppers (for ABTs). We stood around the barrel for 5 hours just catching up.... and many brown pops. Then we had some gooood food!

UDS #4 for me. This is a flip lid with 3 Weber daisy wheels for exhaust. Tel-Tru thermo,Maverick digital and casters to get around.

Hey Skidder,

I'm diggin the caster set up. Very nice!

Your Build is Pure Genius and Inspired!!!
Great Job!!!!

Skidder said:

UDS #4 for me. This is a flip lid with 3 Weber daisy wheels for exhaust. Tel-Tru thermo,Maverick digital and casters to get around.

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Thanks I have about $24.00 into this one only cause I bought new grates. Can't wait to fire this one up. This was a really fun build. Took the day off from doing house chores (painting) had a few cold ones and went to work on it.

inspecting my barrel after the burn I've noticed the middle did not but all the way out.. Would it help if I go ahead and put the hole in the barrel before I burn it out.. That way it would be getting more air and make the fire hotter?

yea drill the holes, it'll get glowing hot!

Here's how Iset mine up. Started with the standerd build with a little mod. In stead of drilling 3 1 inch holed I drilled 1 and them 2 3/8 inch holes. The reasoning behind this is, after reading this whole thread I noticed 90% of the brethren had 1 valve uncapped and was ajusting with the ballvalve. My drum will run about 310 wide open, and if I want to do chiken I have a weber. Just my 2 cents.

Whatever works in your setup Novass, do it

hi from Rockyathabaska

figuring out how to post pron;so proud of my bbq.

some of my setup







whiskey glazed cedar plank salmon,you've got to try this one!

some pit bean,wings in the UDS,and some ribs.

Hope these pics work out,thanks for the help posting Chef Jim

Rocky

Weekend Update: Worked on it some more this weekend. Still haven't smoked with it, but I could if I had a day to babysit it. Things I did- moved the main intake up higher (fat-man mod), added wheels, put an additional exhaust wheel and thermometer on the lid, and finished the charcoal basket.

"Centerfold Shot"
Here she is, as she sits now.


"Fat Man Mod"
Added an Elbow and 18" extension for the Main adjustable 1" intake. The valve handle is right at the Rack Temp Probe.


"Added Exhaust and Thermometer"
I took daisy wheel from my old donor kettle and mounted it on the lid with 4 new holes. I also grabbed a thermometer from a trashed grill (along with some Stainless Steel bling to be added later) and put her in on top. Also, note the wood handle. I took all of 5 minutes with some sandpaper to get it cleaned up. It was pretty nasty before, and I'm going to stain and seal it before long.


"Wheels"
I used a wheel assembly from the donor Weber, and made a third leg from some scrap 1/16" stock. Works great, and free.


"Charcoal Basket"
This was made with the intent of using it as a grill, so that is why it looks as it does. You wouldn't need the "wings" otherwise, but the legs are necessary.


"Legs and Wings"
Closeup of the hanging assembly. The basket bottom is 3" above the bottom of the barrel.


"Mounted up High, With a Rack"

nice build McGurk,
now you really only need one bbq in your yard!
Did I say that?
I've got five and am scoring another from craig's list tonight.
I really like how you can raise the charcoal basket to grill.
A guy shouldn't need any more mods to a uds than what you've got on yours,nice job!

Rocky

McGurk,when you get a chance and fire that dude up,check your temp readings on both thermos. I know you have a deep fryer thermo.in the middle of the drum. From the looks of it, the one in the lid should have a much shorter stem, can you place that one into the same hole as the long stemmed one just to get a temp reading so you can compare the 2 diferent readings? BTW,good looking drum.:thumb::clap2:

Thanks for the compliment, Woodbutcher1. Funny that I was just calibrating both of them in boiling water as a check before logging on here, and they both needed tweaking. You're right; the lid thermo has a very short probe that was pretty off, so i got it close to right. The fryer thermo was pretty close, though. I've got them in the drum on my second (and hotter) seasoning run. Was able to get over 400 degrees this time with the additional exhaust holes and better coal distribution (used a small 12" dia. cage within the basket). It did burn through it faster, though.

Did you record the temp readings? then pull the fryer gage and place the lid gage were the fryer gage was ? if you do that, you can see a temp differance of at least 80* to 100* less with short stemed gage.

I guess I'm not getting what you're saying. I know that the outer ring of the drum runs cooler than the center, but I don't know why I'd want to know what's happening at the cooler part when a person is most interested at the hot part of your cook. Obviously a short probe at rack level will give you a different reading than a long probe, but is one better than the other? I'd rather know the high temp (at the center) and regulate from that, than to check at the side, underestimate the temp and overcook the food thereby drying it out. The one on my lid is only there as a check (and because I had it laying around), but I don't think it's necessary.

BTW, the "probe" on the freebie lid thermo is only about an inch long, and it's threaded except for the last 1/8" for the keeper nut. The end has a slot for a regular screwdriver to do your adjustment with. Being it goes up over 700 deg, I don't know how accurate it is at typical smoking temps (a lot of slop?). We'll find out if it's even worth keeping on there, or needs to be replaced with something better.

After reading through all of these post, I have finally finished 3 ugly drums smokers. My husband thought I was nuts. I found 2 unlined barrels with lids for 10 dollars, and someone gave me the other one.

Sorry to hound you McGurk about the thermometer placement and readings. Back on page #386 post #5790, i commented about the temp. differances on my drum. A comment was made by h20loo about a100* variation.
I screwed up, i thought he was you,you guys look so much allike.LOL
Hope i didn't mess you up to much.:doh: