Knaack box parilla build

BacK from the fabricator today. The tuyere looks awesome sauce, can't hardly wait to burn the paint off that sucker but no pics today.

What I have now is a couple hoops or stirrups welded to the back of the box, and a removable chimney holder upper bracket like so:



The chimney pipe fits the bracket nice and tight:



And there is a holder and a SS clamp at the top to hold the chimney pipe from twisting:



I rate my fabricator A++, but he is only charging me A+ prices, so win/win. I have already painted the Knooker around the new welds and have the bracket about 3/4 painted. Next up is finish painting the bracket, and it is finally time to sand the interior. The original dryer vent / chimney thimble is about wrecked by fabrication, but this was not unexpected. I will do the first burn on the thimble I have to see how bad it really is.

My plan is to wait until I have about three hours free, then put on my respirator and get in there with a wire brush on an angle grinder and get it done. Since the exterior is completely painted (until I fool with camo pattern when it gets warm again) I can leave the box out doors. Once it is sanded I will have to get some firebrick in there so the baked oil finish burns aren't happening on bare metal.

I will probably do the first burn for the first layer of baker oil interior finish with it fairly close to the ground. Once I am happy with the (chimney height) first burn I will probably do the second planned baked oil burn with the box at planned working height. And then the third and final baked oil burn with the entire assembly at adjusted working height. Then I can leave it outdoors, fully assembled through the winter, and be cooking on it.

woot

 

Ok, progress, and a problem.

Progress:
I got the interior sanded, vacuumed, coated with safflower oil and only bricked half the floor. I have done two burns like this now, one burn with the bricks to the left like pictured, and a second burn (cleaned, vacuumed and re-oiled between burns) with the bricks and fire on the right. So each half of the floor has been bare metal with oil on it for one burn. I did add a second section of 4" diameter single wall stove pipe to my chimney to improve draw.



It takes about 90 minutes to produce a pile of coals this big:



A couple issues. In general, enclosed fires for cooking food are not regulated in Alaska. However, when a food cooking fire is greater than three feet in any one dimension (my floor is 48" long) the cooker is subject to burn permits and restricitons by the AK Department of Forestry. I have previous experience with a pit dug in the dirt for cooking a whole pig at 3x5 feet. The forester's are very easy to deal with and polite. With reasonable precautions like having a charged garden hose ready to go while we were burning wood in the pit to heat up rocks to cook the pig, not leving the fire unattended, and notifying the local fire department of our planned burn and not doing doing a cook while the danger of forest fire was high, they were happy, and once the pit/ cooker has a pig in it and is covered up with dirt (enclosed) it was no longer a regulated thing.

So all common sense stuff I am perfectly willing to do. I have enough family in California that I don't want to start a forest fire at all. When they told me I only needed to have four feet of bare earth around the pit before I lit a fire in it I was able to tell the forester I had already cleared 12 feet of ground around the cooker to bare mineral deposit with no vegetation on it. From a common sense perspective The AK DoF regulations are very minimal.

What I want to do is be able to pile a bunch of wood in the fire basket, make sure it is going good, and then close the front door and lid _so the cooker is enclosed_ and then _not attend the enclosed cooker_ for 90 minutes while I am waiting for the cordwood to burn down to coals I can cook on. I have done the two burns so far just standing next to thing constantly attending the fire with a charged garden hose ready to go. I have tried closing it up (both front and lid) but it is not leaky enough, not enough air gets in to keep the fire going. So I have had to open both doors to get enough airflow to burn down the coals, and attend the fire continuously.

So the problem is I need an air intake. With the right sized hole I can have an enclosed cooker that does not need to be attended constantly while I spend 90 minutes doing prep work waiting for usable coals.

The proposed fire grate is going to be nominal 16x16x12 inches. The chimney stack is 4" diameter and (edit) nominal four feet tall. How big a hole do I need to drill or cut for an air intake?

 

You can use one like this
https://smokerbuildermfg.com/collections/dampers/products/6-inch-pinwheel-damper

Or this one
https://smokerbuildermfg.com/collections/dampers/products/copy-of-3x12-slide-damper

 

Thanks @Bigdaddy4760 . I would be happy to use either of those, though it means a third trip to the fabricators shop.

I have decided to go to the Forestry office and get their advice on where to put the air intakes so the Knooker will qualify as an enclosed cooker that could be left unattended - before I drill any holes.

 

More progress. With the oil baked finish finsh done I went ahead and put it up on blocks (3 courses of cinder) so I could get it to near working height and set out to test the tuyere. I am using cement pavers for now, 8x16 nominal. I got them free on CL. Clay firebrick splits up here (1.5 x 4 x 9 inches nominal) are $4.75 each, pumice firebrick splits with the same nominal dimension, about $7 each. If I need to upgrade I will, but in the meantime free is good.

*** up and bricked

This is about how big a fire I need to run to make some glowing red coals to cook on before tomorrow. I suspect I am going to need to upgrade to 6" chimney pipe, but I want to make sure before I go back to my fabricator, plus I will have to pay him to modify the holder-upper bracket or make a new one.



Here is the tuyere in one of infinity positions. It is just a piece of pipe with a cap in the fire end, open at the end outside the cooker.

***cold tuyere

I piled a bunch of coals on it, held a hair dryer from the second hand store ($5-10) at the open end outside the cooker, and feel pretty good I will hit 1000dF at the cooking grate to put a nice crust on steaks.

***hot tuyere

I also grabbed a couple carabiners last time I was at the Army/Navy store so when I latch it closed, it stays closed.

***biners

 

I do need a pretty heavy (leather?) apron to keep my nipples from blistering from the heat, and need to include the side heat from the firegrate in my estimations for like simmering wine reduction. Gonna need some new fire management tools too. It is nice to have a potentially great cooker in my hands with a learning curve ahead of me.

 

First cook ever on open fire for me today, save foil wrapped camping misadventures.

I put some oak and hickory at the bottom of the firebasket, so those were the first coals out. I had a skillet upside down sort of towards the right rear corner, heaped oak and hickory coals up the side of that, and then put a skillet of sausage on top of the upside down skillet.



I didn't get any during pictures of the chili going together in the dutch oven. I had it raging hot when the cubes of beef chuck went in, and it was off to the races. One reason I did this recipe as my first live fire cook is because I have made it so often. The dutch oven was hot enough to race through the steps today. I did finally have a free hand to run the camera after I had burning embers on the lid. The sausage took another 15 minutes or so to finish.

 

I happened to find _The Asador - Mastering the Art of Cook with Fire_ by William Oatis I think Friday night as e-books. I have both book I and book II on my Kindle now. I rated them both five stars on Amazon. Great great info.

If you are curious why I went off on this tangent, the easiest thing to do next time you are grilling burgers is put the hardwood chunks right into your chimney with the charcoal. Try grilling on charcoal with glowing red hickory coals instead of grilling on charcoal with smoldering hickory chunks. Changed my life. I have learned more in a weekend from these two books than I have in two years of exercising my google-fu.

Anyroad, I started out today cooking thermometers to see what temps I was getting at the cooking grate. I wasn't getting much from the active flames on the side, only +93dF with ambients in the mid +30s dF. I started spreading coals under the cooking grate once that was established.

***cooking thermometers

Once I was happy, I pulled a ribeye from the fridge, squirted it down real good with salmuera - water with so much salt in it you have to boil it to get the salt to dissolve, and then cool it gently.

***it's on

And I didn't need my tuyere to get a fabulous crust. I am going to have to play with this some before I make any broad statements. First impression, distribution of salt into the meat is different with salmuera than it is with sprinkling flakes. Besides the saltwater all I seasoned with was a bit of butter and a bit of olive oil once it was in the cambro.

***crust

 

Cook du jour highlighted my shortcomings building ground fires. I run about 8 cords annually through my woodstove, but really for most of the winter I am just tossing fresh fuel on an active bed of hot coals. This was supposed to be easy, but it collapsed within a few minutes of ignition.

***not easy

It would have been enough coals to sear a single steak, but I had to get medieval on it.

***medieval

Got the steak on eventually, decent crust. Not happy with the salmuera liquid this time around. I could taste it, but I will go back to solid salt grains for tomorrow's cook.

***crust

 

Heard from Alaska Division of Forestry today. They want me to get a seasonal permit for the Knooker. I feel like I have achieved a new level in Dungeons and Dragons or similar. Go big or go home I have heard said.

The forester closed his note to me with "Bon appetite!!"

 

And no tomohawks will be sold at Kroger here until Memorial Day next year. The meat manager saw me coming up to the counter and apologized, he thought he would be getting some in and was going to save a box back for me to pick through. I pulled a third of a beef tenderloin from the freezer today so I will have something to cook on Thursday.

So far on the Knooker I have done a few steaks, a few stews in cast iron and burnt a fearsome amount of cordwood doing it. Life is good.