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Then the cool fix for the door so it opens vs stopping on the welded plate. Stainless steel hardware with a spring so the door is spring loaded but slides right past the seal plates.
To finish I need to rope seal the doors. I also think I'm going to add a few extra bolts to the fire box sense they only put 4 in from the factory ( should be 8 ) I also need to decide what to do for thermometers. Which I'm still trying to locate. Any other ideas ? Or something I missed ?
I just picked up my Oklahoma Joe from Walmart for under three hundred bucks. It is a slightly smaller model but all in all it is the same smoker. I sealed the fire box as you did, but the high temp temp sealer I got locally was old and hard to get out of the tube, but it worked. I also picked up some flat rope gasket. I put that around the main chamber door. Only one problem there. The gasket at the top keeps the door from closing tight. I took it off for now but I will put it back when I get door latches installed. I saw another post here about the door latches from Lowes that work well but I will look for something that is spring loaded for that though. I also found that the door didn't fit tight out of the box. One side was a little higher when closed. That was easily resolved with a screwdriver. I placed a small screwdriver under the hing on the high side and applied a little pressure to adjust the hinge there. Worked great. I will be putting the flat rope back on the top of the door when I find a good set of latches. I did a high temp (400 degrees) burn in to set everything. Today I will be doing a test cook. Ribs I think to see how well it works. Also this will help season the smoker. I getting happier by the minute. Here are a couple of pics.
It is a great smoker I am still tweaking mine I have done a few burns in it for seasoning and have cooked a few things on the fire chamber side but I haven't smoked anything yet. I should be smoking next weekend.
I have the OK joe also and I saved up bacon ,sausage and hamburger grease and coated the inside on mine with that to speed up the seasoning process. now it works like a well oiled machine
I picked up a set of river county stats they look really nice. They are 2" stainless with a fine calibration screw on the back side so you can make sure there spot on.