PIts are up here http://www.flickr.com/photos/busterb, Maybe food tomorrow.

The kajan m-wave, wooden bar-b-que??????? :worried:

that's a pretty cool concept! i like!

I Q'd beef brisket over the weekend. It was my foray into brisket and I was a little nervous. But it came out great. Very tender and moist.

I grew up in St. Louis where BBQ is all about pork - mostly ribs with the occaisional pulled pork. But I tell you what. Brisket gives them a run for the money in the "what to Q" race. Mmmmm. Heaven on a plate.

I think Cali is one of the few places people Q tri-tip - lotsa garlic, salt, and pepper, slow cook for a couple hundred hours - yum!

That's the only place I've seen the tri-tip done. They have another name for it in the Bay area. Have wanted to try it here, but can't find any.

I want a *REAL* barbeque. Something I can cook a dozen hams on. A whole flock of turkeys. A barrel of butts. Why? I have a penchant for overbuilding anything I make. And my next project is a combo smoker/grill.

I was over at my friend's place the other day, and he's working on a trailer rig. I don't have the acreage to house that kind of rolling iron, but it turns out, that the changes he was making to it involved removing the portion that was his smoker unit. A little wheelin and dealin later and I became the proud owner of a 24" diameter, 48" tall, 3/8" wall steel beast. Not to mention a double hernia.

My first step will be to make a stand for it, and some wheels. My buddy said he'd loan me his truck and let me use the forklift to load it, but after that, I was on my own. So, wheels==good.

I did take some preliminary pictures, but they're crap, so when I get some more, I'll post them.

My goal is to make a unit that I can smoke with, bbq with and grill with. I have plenty of steel and a friend with a welder. What do yo think? Can it be done? Will the variety of functions cripple them all? Vertical? Horizontal?

Please, don't all shout at once. I'll read every post, I guarantee it. I'm looking forward to your input.

BigV, I'm outta my league here, but I do know how much your chunk o' happiness weighs.
(reaching for pocket ref)

24"ø @ 3/8" = 95#/ft

So that's a 390# chunk o' fun. Spring for the Heavy Duty locking casters. :)

If you only wanted a smoker, then I'd go vertical. The temperature will be more consistent over the whole smoker. However, since you want to grill on it too, I think you need to go horizontal.

If you go vertical you get Pi*24^2 or ~452 square inches of grilling space. If you go horizontal you get 24 * 48 or 1152 square inches of grilling space.

You can compensate for the drawbacks of the horizontal design through certain tweaks. Do a net search on "silver smoker mods". That'll give you some ideas.

BTW - Smoking and bbqing require pretty much the same design. The only difference is the temperature.

Either way is fine, I've built a few pits in the last 45 yrs. One thing I know, is as soon as finished you'll see something you'll wish to change or add. I don't recommend cutting doors or any big openings all at once. Skip around and leave a little bit holding, ever foot or so. And let cool. Or the sob will spring open. Also tack any hinges on before final cut.

Anytime the hubby fires up the charcoal the first thing I do is peel a white onion, rub butter on it, cut an "X" about 3/4 of the way through it, fill it with a spoonful of butter and wrap it in aluminum foil. It's the first thing on the grill and the last thing off. It's tender and sweet (as sweet as a white onion can be anyway). Love them!

Aw, now this is my kind of thread! I love BBQ! For about three years, my dad and I hd neither an operational oven or stove, so whatever we didn't get delivered, we bbq'd.

A couple of my favorites:

* Smoked pork chops, using apple cider and applewood

* Smoked t-bone steaks

* Salmon fillets cooked on cedar planks

* Grilled canteloupe

I just got married two weeks ago and had the reception in my backyard. I grilled for 40 people, making tri-tip steaks (not the roasts - they'd have been charcoal) and chicken breasts. I made up a wicked marinade, too, using lime, three kinds of chili powder, salt (just a little), black pepper, brown sugar, and garlic. At this point, I'm having to eamil the recipe to all the folks who cam ebecause it really did come out well!

TOOT TOOT!

That's me tooting my own horn. :)

So....would you post the recipe? Sounds great!!

Darned if I can find any of the conversations I've had with y'all on this topic. Were *all* of them in my head?

I have a new (to me) smoker. It's a lovely offset firebox unit from New Braunfels. I've gotten many meals from it, and today's feast is salmon jerky.

I bought a couple of medium/small Copper River sockeyes from The Fish Co. down the street. I wanted to make strips, so I got whole fish and cut inch-ish wide strips the length of the fish. This was a LOT harder to do than I expected. Also (flippin rookie mistake) I checked but failed to discern that the fish were NOT scaled until I'd already filleted them. Crap. So, the strips took a thrashing as I scaled the narrow strips. They're kind of ugly. Anyhow, I'd also intended to hang them in pairs and smoke them vertically so I kept pairs of them intact at the top. I'd intended to hang them like hand dipped candles. But, I changed my mind when I realized how much crap I'd have to macguyver to mate the two smokers (the other one is a Brinkman's Bullet).

I made a marinade of two pounds of brown sugar, one pound of non iodized salt, a cup of teriyaki sauce, a cup of ginger liqueur and salt and pepper and enough water to cover the fish. It made about eight inches in my five gallon food bucket. I let it marinate at room temperature overnight.

This morning, I despaired of smoking because the weather forecast was for a high of 63 and showers. It looked like that until midday when the sun broke out. I then moved to the backyard and started a chimney of mesquite lump charcoal in the chimney starter. I came back in and took the strips out of the bucket and laid them on the oven rack which I'd placed over the sink.

At this point I'd previously just tossed the chunks (not strips) into the smoker, but recipes I'd read told me that the development of the "PELLICLE" was very important to the quality of the finished product. I have to admit that the warnings were strong enough to overcome my usual impatience as I waited and patted dry and bathed them in the wash of hot air from the blow dryer until I could detect the presence of the shiny tacky sealed surface on the fish, or at least on most of the fish. This meant I could load the smoker a bit at a time. and I did working from the coldest part of the racks furthest from the firebox and working my way toward the firebox.

There were pictures along the way, but I'm in the middle of a picture/camera/computer crisis so, you'll have to wait for those. The strips have been on the smoker for an hour or so at this point, I might risk another picture soon.