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(Question) Dera Chimney Mod?

PorkSword

Knows what WELOCME spells.
Joined
Feb 11, 2004
Location
Austin, TX
I was helping a buddy mod his Hondo this past weekend, and as many of you may know, one of the mods is to extend the chimney of the hondo down closer to the cooking grates.
This mod essentially keeps the hot smoke from exhausting too fast, and brings level of the hot smoke down some so more of the meat is exposed to the smoke.

Well, my question is: Why can't we do something similar in the Dera?

What if the opening to the exhaust was near the bottom of the smoke chamber, for example?
Wouldn't the hot smoke rise and fill the chamber, and force the cooler smoke down and out the exhaust?
Granted, the exhaust chimney would need to rise vertically for some distance to create enough up-draft to draw fresh oxygen into the firebox.

Can you guys see any disadvantage to this?

A couple of advantages that I see are that the hot smoke would circulate around the meat more, creating more of a convection-type chamber, cooking the meat more evenly. Plus, it would seem that the sweet blue would have more time to flavor the meat instead of just blowing past it like in the current design.

There must be something flawed in my theory, because I haven't seen any horizontal with an exhaust lower than the cooking grates or any vertical with the exhaust somewhere other than the very top.

Any thoughts? :?:
 
Interesting! I wish I had a sheet metal bender 'cause I'd build a square chimney extender to slide down into the chamber and run temperature checks when the chimney started at different levels.
 
Arlin_MacRae said:
I'd build a square chimney extender to slide down into the chamber and run temperature checks when the chimney started at different levels.

I thought of that, too, but unfortunately, the Dera chimney is in the center of the top, so if you extend the chimney down, you could never put any meat higher than the lowered chimney, unless you hang it from the meat hooks..
 
Yep, but you could test the heat without putting racks in. You would have to run the chimney up the side in the working model, of course, which would probably change the thermodynamic... hehe
 
Unfortunately the chamber would fill up with smoke and then work it's way down to the opening. Once that happens the heat/smoke would just go straight for the new lowered chamber and leave. Your meat that is now hanging around the lowered chimney, or next to it if you put it in the corner, would effectivly be baking from the radiant heat in stale smoke. I don't think you would get a good product out of something like that. The advantage of the vertical is the heat/smoke flows through the smoker and smokes your meat.
 
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