Feedback on my Mods greatly appreciated.

[smokybrit]

Hi guys

I'm relatively new to smoking  - have done about 4 runs on my weber kettle premium over two years and have now upgraded to an Oklahoma Joe Highland which I picked up in the sale in Walmart UK for equivalent to190 dollars! Pretty decent I think considering these things are normally a lot cheaper in the states. Looking forward to giving it a first run this weekend.

Anyway, having read a few articles and watched a few youtube videos, I've made some mods to it:

1. Sealed all joints with some 1200 degrees Celcius silicone sealant.

2. Ran some self adhesive fiberglass gasket tape around the cooking chamber door.

3. Thirdly - most interestingly, I tried to make my own baffle plate "on the cheap" as I have not the skill or budget for a proper fabricated piece.. I bought a high quality cookie baking tray that fitted snugly into the first 1/3 of the cooking chamber, the part nearest to the fire and drilled differing sizes of perforations into it, the smaller ones nearer the fire and bigger on the far side of the tray away from the fire. The idea being that the tray will deflect the heat down under the tray to delay it escaping upwards into the cook chamber until it has passed under the tray and is in the middle of the cook chamber. I appreciate this is a "quick fix" on a proper full length baffle plate but hope it will go some way to re-distributing the hear / smoke and would welcome thoughts? This is what Id really like thoughts on!

Lastly - I haven't bothered with an extension on the chimney exhaust to bring it down into the cooking chamber. How much will this be missed?

Any feedback from experienced smokers would be great ...thanks all. 

 

[hardcookin]

The best thing to do is...Learn the pit right away then you'll know it's personality. Then it should be easy to smoke on. You can then make tweaks and adjustments.
My opinion on the chimney extension is it messes up the airflow. Do you know what the tempeture difference is from side to side?

The gasket on the cooking chamber will help.

Enjoy your new smoker!!

 

[joe black]

I can't give you an opinion on the exhaust, as I've never had one that wasn't at grate level. Your baffle sounds good. Keep a check on the temps, side to side, and keep a record of how it's working.

Good luck with it. You may want to read about tuning plates.

 

[uzikaduzi]

your mods sound like good ideas but are you addressing issues you are experiancing or are you following advice other people have suggested on how to make a smoker "better" I ask because you can make great BBQ on a pretty crappy leaky thin smoker without those mods but with or without them, the skill set to control the fire from the intake is still 100% necessary.

If you know all this feel free to ignore it, I just got the feeling you might be just starting out.

something that makes offsets much more forgiving is a water pan IMO... it allows you to have a little more bandwidth on how much heat you are putting out compared to where you are aiming for with the extra heat sink.