Zombie Pit Returns, pt 2!!

Finally got some work-time in yesterday. My buddy couldn't stay so it was just me.

I decided to not bother trying to make the covers for the holes in the top perfectly round and just went ahead and welded them on.





Cleaned up.





Then I welded the covers on to the exhaust caps.





Since I was going over that way, I figured I'd cut some flat stock for the hinges.



Then I started to clean up the welds on the exhaust caps on the belt sander.



By the time I was done with that it was getting late so I had to quit for the day.

Stay tuned for another fun filled episode next week (hopefully)!

Thanks for watching!

Gee Tee said:

Most people don't realise (realize in the U S?) how long the little jobs take. It can get demoralising if you don't feel you getting on quickly enough. Keep at her, I promise you will look back at the work and think "worth it". Looking forward to the next installment.

Click to expand...

Agree 100%

My wife & my boss both jokingly comment about how long it's taking to get done. My boss loves spreadsheets so I put this together to show him that I am making progress.

Welcome to this episode of This Olde Pit.

I was able to stay and get a few things done yesterday.

First, I laid the smoker down so I could layout the doors, hinges and handles.





I realized a while ago that the handles I bought weren't going to work without some modification because the striker is too tall, even set at the lowest position. I'm going to make new strikers out of a piece of 3/4" or 1" bar stock and weld them on instead.




Once I had everything laidout, I finished fabricating one set of hinges by drilling the holes for the pins/bolts and rounding off the corners. I also finished grinding down the welds on the other exhaust cap while I was over there.



I set them back up on the smoker using a length of SS tubing to keep them lined up.






Then I tacked them on. You can't see it in the pictures but I unspooled some of the gasket I bought and laid it underneath the door to make sure I got the proper gap.








It was getting late, so I replaced the tubing with a couple of bolts and flipped the smoker upright to check the function- everything works just fine.





The door didn't move much at all and as still lined up pretty good to the lines I made.




For the other door I'm going to try to get the small parts of the hinges closer in size/roundness. No one else will probably ever notice, but I do.



Thanks for joining us on this weeks' This Olde Pit. We'll see you next time.


Thanks for looking!

Work was closed today for the holiday so I snuck in for a few hours of fun.


I cut and drilled the hinges for the other door. I found an easier way to make the little pieces- first I drilled the holes, then I bolted them together and rounded off the corners and cut them to length. They came out much more consistent in size and the curve matched almost perfectly.





Then I tacked on the door parts.





And then the frame parts.





Then I took the door back off and finished welding on the frame parts.





While those were cooling down, I drilled the holes for the handles in both doors and finished welding the hinges on.








Then it was time to reassemble everything- looks pretty good.






I decided the easiest way to fix the striker problem was to just make a new one, so I took some measurements and cut it out of a piece of 3/4" bar stock. Took quite a while on the band saw, but it came out good.








It seemed to work well, so I welded it on. While I was looking at it tho, I noticed something- I had always planned to use 3/8" clevis pins for the hinges, but once I got them in I realized I like the cleaner look of the nut and bolt.


Which do ya'll think looks better?





After that, I flipper her right-side-up again.





What a sight!


In the last 20 minutes I decided to throw together one of the exhaust caps. It's a simple but effective design I've seen on a bunch of different smokers on this forum.








By that point it was time to clean up, so that's it for this episode of This Olde Pit.


Thanks for looking!

I took a look at the front of the basket again- it is super warped and will take a ton of grinding and and bending to get it straight again and chances are it will still look like crap.

Then I started to think about it last night- I'm not very confident in the overall concept of the basket. I thought it would make loading wood into the pit easier but now I think it's going to make a mess and cause massive heat loss to pull the fire out of the smoker every now and then.

I guess I'll wait to see how the test fire goes. :decision:

If the basket design works, I'll keep it and just replace the warped front with a new piece of steel. If it doesn't work well, I'll make a regular hinged door and weld up a grate to put inside the fire box like a regular stick burner has.


Also, probably going to have to replace those back wheels with solid rubber ones like I did with the casters. The "no-flat" ones I have on there now are only rated for ~300lbs each and I can hear them groaning every time I have to move the smoker around.

6/14 Progress

Dang! Never have I had to work so hard to get so little done.

In a little over 3 hours I got the holes for the thermos drilled and tapped, the gaskets put on around the doors openings and straightened out the front of the wood drawer.

It has been quite a few years since I used a tap and I forgot the most important lesson: don't force it. Tap shattered inside the second hole and took me a while to chisel it out.









The holes aren't the straightest, but the hose barbs thread into them ok.

Then, I'm putting the gasket on and the adhesive that I bought starts spurting out of the caulk gun- looks like it had separated a little since I bought it 5 years ago.



Not sure if it's going to work or not, but it doesn't even matter because the gasket I bought is falling apart and throwing fiberglass fibers all into the air and now I'm afraid to use the cooker with it on there.

Well at least I was able to get the front of the drawer straightened pretty good. It should seal ok, once I get some silicone sponge gasket on there instead.

After waiting for weeks to finally have time to work on this thing and this is what happens? What a **** show.

Anyway, going to try to fire it up tomorrow morning and see how it runs.

I'll post some pics, if I can.

Thanks for lookin!

Test Fire

Went in to work around 7:30 this morning and did a test run.
Loaded up the basket with some shredded cardboard and a bunch of small logs from a tree my Bro-in-law cut down from his back yard and lit it up.









While it warmed up, I went to finish the other smoke stack.



After about 45 mins the thermos were reading 500*+, so it looks like everything works as designed.

About an hour later, I was very happy to see that the top and bottom thermos were only off by a few degrees from each other. And as time went on, they got even closer. At one point, they were exactly the same.



Shortly after that temps dipped down, so I threw a few more logs on. My suspicions about the wood basket were correct- it makes a terrible mess of ash and lit coals when I pull it out, so I'll be removing it and making a regular door and a grate to keep the coals off the floor of the firebox.

I didn't do a biscuit test, but at several points I used my work's IR laser thermo and got readings from the various racks at both the middle and outer edges and they were all within 5* of each other, so I call that a success.

I only had a few hours to do this, so by that time I had to start closing it down. The exhaust caps work ok, but don't create a good enough seal and quite a bit of smoke still escapes under them when fully closed. Smoke also gets through the coupling where the upper smoke stack attaches to the cooking chamber.

I think when I redo the door gaskets I will also put some pieces in these areas to make them seal better.

That's all for this episode of "This Olde Pit". See you next time & thanks for lookin!

MisterChrister said:

This is WAY cool! Way to stick with it - I'm really happy to see it paying off; you must be ecstatic!

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It is. At first I was going to sell it as soon as it was done, but now I think I'm going to hold onto it for a while.

Mike Twangzer said:

Nice .. Just when I thought the series was cancelled !!!!

Click to expand...

Nope, the show MUST go on!!

First Cook

So 2 Saturdays ago I did a test cook on the smoker.

Link to the thread

The results were... not great.

It seemed like the temps were relatively steady between 300* and 350* for the majority of the cook, although higher than I normally cook at on my UDS.

The meat looked good and had a good color. At no time did the smoker ever chug out thick white smoke- after lighting, it was thin blue coming out of the exhaust stacks the entire time.

So after 5 1/2 hours at those temps, why were my 2 racks of untrimmed spares still tough, undercooked and have a very bitter smoke flavor despite the meat not being dark on the outside and a practically nonexistent smoke ring?

I'm very confused by these results.

I could figure out where the bitter smoke came from if I had any other indicator to go on- such as the smoke being thick and heavy, the meat being super dark or overly smoked, but it wasn't.

I could figure out what the issue was with the meat not being tender or cooked if the temps were low the whole cook or I had issues keeping the fire going, or there was nothing coming out of the exhaust, but none of that happened.

The only 2 things I can think of that might have caused this is either the wood I used in my test fire, which was very old and had a bunch of bark on it, left a bunch of residue inside -OR- I had too small of a fire because I was letting it burn down practically to nothing before adding more wood (despite doing it this way, temps were relatively stable).

For this cook I used all well-seasoned cherry splits from the same lot I've been using for every cook the past 5 years or so. There was some bark on a few pieces, but they were stored in my dry garage and were not wet or rotten or feel underweight.

Anyone have any insights? Do I have too much draft or something?