Wolverine
is one Smokin' Farker
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2012
- Location
- Clarkston Michigan
Maybe tis the way your cooker is sitting, turn your cooker fire door into the wind.
Never cooked on a 48, but my 84 won’t put a fire out with 3 of the 4 vents totally closed. If you have too big of a fire and cut the air back too much it will smolder some, but you would have to work hard to kill the fire. Unless it is too small or the wood is wet.
I think your issue is with the wood. Not enough and maybe not dry enough. Charcoal is OK to get wood lit, but it doesn’t really add much to the coal bed. Half a lit chimney is all you need. Put that in first, and then stack up 6-7 of your splits or maybe 4-5 larger ones, criss crossing for airflow. Open the cook chamber door and leave the FB door open until most of the logs are burning and you have significant flame then shut the FB door. No need for half measures or slow incremental closing.
Within a handful of seconds you should see a decent flow of smoke flowing around the RF plate into the cook chamber. Let it run like that for a bit and if the fire doesn’t die, shut the cook chamber door and watch to see smoke flowing out of the stack. It should be flowing not just a trickle. Add more wood and keep adding wood until the cook chamber is 300+ and holding there.
If there is good flow, it should burn and if it doesn’t it is your wood. If not figure out where the blockage is. It could be an air pressure issue with wind wrapping around obstructions like a wall or fence so try to get it where the intakes and stack are in the open.
The start of the cook takes a lot more wood than fire maintenance. Put in a lot more than you think you need and add logs before you think you need to. Run like this for an hour or more to build up a coal bed. I usually figure 60-90 minutes of burn before I put the food on. If new logs don’t catch fairly quickly, they are too wet or your coal bed is too small.
Put it on a trailer and Head to Burleson and We’ll cook on it til we figure it out.......
Oh Ya ,, bring about 4 Briskets and 8 racks of St Louis cuts.......... :thumb: I got the wood.
Never cooked on a 48, but my 84 won’t put a fire out with 3 of the 4 vents totally closed. If you have too big of a fire and cut the air back too much it will smolder some, but you would have to work hard to kill the fire. Unless it is too small or the wood is wet.
I think your issue is with the wood. Not enough and maybe not dry enough. Charcoal is OK to get wood lit, but it doesn’t really add much to the coal bed. Half a lit chimney is all you need. Put that in first, and then stack up 6-7 of your splits or maybe 4-5 larger ones, criss crossing for airflow. Open the cook chamber door and leave the FB door open until most of the logs are burning and you have significant flame then shut the FB door. No need for half measures or slow incremental closing.
Within a handful of seconds you should see a decent flow of smoke flowing around the RF plate into the cook chamber. Let it run like that for a bit and if the fire doesn’t die, shut the cook chamber door and watch to see smoke flowing out of the stack. It should be flowing not just a trickle. Add more wood and keep adding wood until the cook chamber is 300+ and holding there.
If there is good flow, it should burn and if it doesn’t it is your wood. If not figure out where the blockage is. It could be an air pressure issue with wind wrapping around obstructions like a wall or fence so try to get it where the intakes and stack are in the open.
The start of the cook takes a lot more wood than fire maintenance. Put in a lot more than you think you need and add logs before you think you need to. Run like this for an hour or more to build up a coal bed. I usually figure 60-90 minutes of burn before I put the food on. If new logs don’t catch fairly quickly, they are too wet or your coal bed is too small.
Would like to see a picture of the fire grate. How far off the bottom of the firebox is it? Do a lot of the coals fall threw the fire grate? Might need a piece of expanded metal on the fire grate. Pictures of the firebox inside and outside would help.
Get a kindling cracker and split your splits
Hmm I have never seen one. Just looked it up and looks like it’s worth the buy.
I just got mine. You can split some pretty big logs with it.Very much worth it. Have had the large one for a couple years now.