bvbull200's Gravity Fed Cabinet Smoker Build Thread - Under the Tutelage of Maner

Understandable. Still trying to find a way to make it work.

 

Back at it!


Goal is to have this thing up on casters and skinned out before the day is through.

 

Gravity’s reachin’ critical mass right there.

 

Zach make it?

 

Those eyes lol. Maner looks like he got caught by surprise!

 

wheres the beer?

 

Probably in the two giant coolers behind them?

 

Nope. Sunday was too hard to swing.

I am there in man bun spirit though!

 

Plenty of beer here.

About ready to put the bottom skin on, then bolt on the casters.

Mounting plates are already welded in place.

 

Dang Bryan hook a sob on 16oz and bring out 12oz today. He is a good crack dealer.
Going good today did a lot of mods to the bottom to support casters when off roading.
Bryan making a hand at welding and no grinding!

 

There fixed it for you.

 

Why no off road tires? Geez!

 

Hell of a day with Maner. Hit a pretty big milestone in the build.

Grabbing some beef jerky and will be on the road for a bit, but will post an update when I get home.

 

Today's goal: Skin the bottom and mount the casters so this SOB can roll on it's own.

I showed up with a cooler full of 12 oz cans of Coors Light as per the usual gift I bestow upon Maner prior to entering his sanctuary .

He was already getting the mounting plates welded to the feet for the casters.

The plan for mounting the feet was a little outside of the plans as we wanted to tie in to the frame as much as possible. The plans called for putting on the outer skin, then mounting the feet/casters to that. Felt like a potential point of failure on a rig this big and heavy. I got to cutting out squares in the bottom skin to accommodate the new course of action. Ended up stripping about 1/4" off of each side of the skin, too, to allow for more room to tie in to the frame.



Maner got the feet welded together, then mounted up. Insulation added as well.



We put the bottom skin on and welded it all the way (as opposed to just tacking), so other than some cosmetic cleanup which we'll do before paint, the bottom is pretty well complete. For the record, I welded the entire bottom skin on myself. With a lot of advice from Maner, I've gotten pretty comfortable under the hood. Not gonna lie, nearly that entire line of welds on that bottom skin were pretty damn good. I build the welds up a little so that we had something to square off with the grinder, per Maner's recommendation, and most of the welds turned out pretty nice if I say so myself.




Here is the firebox side. We had to do a little finagling on the intake pipe nipple and seam welding it was a bitch, but got it in there, then started loading up insulation.





Then we loooaddddeeeddd that side with insulation. The middle strip ended up getting cleaned up a bit and covered with the firmer insulation, but it is otherwise fairly well stuffed with high-temp insulation that we were able to work in to all of the nooks and crannies around the firebox and fuel chute:





I mean loaded...



Once that was done, we tacked up the skin then it rose to its feet and stood on its own for the first time:







Here's one with me next to it for size reference - I'm 6'2". Not sure what sort of goofy ass half smirk thing Maner caught me in with this picture :



Getting that skin on the firebox side was a bonus for us. Only skins left are the narrow one to go on the side that has the intake (still need to build in a recess for the temp controller) and the top skin. Then we need to build and mount the door, of course. That would get all 6 sides up. Plenty of other finishing items to do (build/mount racks, chimney, shrouds, temp gauges, etc.), but this thing is coming together!

Oh, and for the folks on here wondering if we had enough beer. We were plenty, um, hydrated .

 

Looking good. How much for you and Maner to build me one just like it?

 

We'll have an answer for that sooner rather than later, hopefully .

Don't want to get too ahead of ourselves, but I think we can take what we've learned on this one and knock another one or three out. Best part is, I get another excuse to spend time at Maner's shop .

 

So for reference how tall are you?

 

Yeah! I need a banana for scale, not a bvbull.

 

Not gonna lie, the ratio of time spend grinding to time spend welding is shifting in favor of the welding. I got a little off one part of the bottom skin today in a few short spots, but otherwise ran some really nice welds. I was even telling Maner to come over and look at them because I was damn proud of them . There is a lot that goes in to welding beyond just being under the hood - planning, deciding the type of weld, setup of the equipment, etc. - but the part of actually running the welds is something I'm getting really comfortable doing.

Still plenty of grinding, though .