Range build misc pics

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jhole

Newbie
Original poster
Feb 12, 2016
11
10
Probably should have taken more pics as I was doing this, but, I didn't have a real clear path or plan.  Most of this was just " shooting from the hip " , see what would happen, and fix or fab from that point and move forward....

This was early on , and I was still figuring out my basic plan....  In general, to use a range than had been sitting around, coupled with an external " smoke generator " , still try to use the original heat and control elements  for a simple - easy to use platform for year-round smoking...

This was my first stab at the smoke generator,  - an old gas cylinder that was going to be my "fire crucible"  with valves on the intake an exhaust.  It was supposed to be pretty adjustable , self contained, and easy to use....   it wasn't...  was a pain to reload due to the top access and  difficult to make it not leak smoke...



It worked, but, getting it started and  lit and burning to a sustainable level was difficult... but you can see that it actually did make smoke...



And... Here was a quick mock-up to see how it would act...  at the time it seemed doable ....



I'll break this here, and let this much upload, and continue on with reply posts..
 
At this point, I still thought that the tank would work, so I set to moved forward on dealing with the exhaust issue..

It was my intention to use this unit year-round and due to the cold weather, that meant trying to be able to use it inside in the winter...   I have an "older" shop that is adjacent to my main shop and it has a number of roof penetrations / stacks, so my goal was to capture the bulk of the smoke and route it to an existing stack...    

Unfortunately - the range that I had grabbed, for some reason, had the vent for the oven off-set from the right rear burner instead of coming right up through the center of the burner..  This was an ass-pain , as I had to change the "underpan" of the range top, and fab an offset tube/ escape for the exhaust to have a clear path...     

*** If you are going to use an old range for a smoker, and have choices, I would get one with the oven vent aligned directly  straight up through the RR burner - Would be way more efficient and easier to seal and dampen if you wished to........


 
Wich brought me to my first mock-up of the temporary set-up to understand the general concept of where i was going... some wheels, temp. adjustable support for smoke chamber, etc...


...And , a bit later, to my first run through to see if it even had a chance in hell of actually working..  Put most of the elements back together, ran a temporary flue, etc...


I went ahead and acgtually smoked some chicken and ribs with the original stove components - and , they actually turned out pretty good...


But it was very apparent that the temperature control and smoke production / control was WAAAYYY out of the range needed....  the temp would swing up to 20 degrees and the smoke wasn't nearly consistant - and dumped a huge cloud everytime it needed to be tended...
 
Thanks to some good information and research from this forum, I checked into PIDs and ordered a cheap amazon PID and relay for the temp issue... Which left me time to try and adress the smoke side of things....

In  an effort to actually find the flash point and smoldering temp of the woods - I kinda stumbled onto an idea...  I was using one of the stove burners to bring the wood up in temperature, and trying to document it's behavior at certain points with a laser therm....    


..... And realized that it was stupid to find the temp. , and then try to recreate it - if I already was creating it....  So, I moved my effort away from actually creating fire in the "smoke chamber" , and retro-fitted one of the stove burners into the "tank" and stacked a coffee can with chips and 'voila....   on demand smoke...


You can see the element wires running down to the element in that pic.  But it was still a pain to service and tend from the top , and at this point I no longer had to control actual fire,  so, the chamber was on it's way out...
 
About this time, the PID showed up.  It was a bit confusing tring to decypher all of the timers, safety switches, etc. as far as where to jump-in and place the relay for the element as there are a ton of wires and crap going on - and I hadn't found the scematic at that point.   But, I did end up getting into stream at the " Bake " cycle so that all I had to do was turn it to bake, set it at 500 degrees, and the PID would attend to the temp....   Or so I thought - there is a second feed coming from somewhere to run the "broil" element at a 110 cycle even when it isn't calling for broil...  This gave me run away temps , and some head scratching until I found the broil element being fed, and simply disabled it....


I'll adress some of this later, as I want to get back into this now that I have realized how handy it would be to have the broiler function on demand for things like ABTs and such - I will set another relay and be able to run the broiler as needed ...  Hopefully I'll get better pics and a clearer explanation when I do that...
 
And then.... Back to addressing the issue of serviceability for the smoke box...  I had an unused tool box sitting around, and it seemed to be about the right size, config, and price to test out a different angle towards making the tending and refill tasks a bit easier.  

Here's a couple of bad vids, showing the location and routing...  still has the cooktop element in it like the "crucible" did.  At this point I was still , also, messing with air pumps to find the optimum config for smoke delivery - I have since realized that the best place for those pumps is in the landfill - more on that later...



 
OK, ...thankyou for that real time feed back....    I've been a member of too many forums...   (because I feel that the best info comes from real people talking..)    But , boy do I wish that there was an understood standard for fora.....    I will check into it and find the  "block" ... it might be in the original upload link at FLICKR - which this platform doesn't support - So maybe there is a conflict in the transfer to youtube from there....     but I guess that it is in this forum's host's structure....    
 
I did a similar build 2 years ago.  It's posted here.  http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/t/166296/smoker-from-electric-stove.   I started out with a Bradley smoke generator which works great, but is a little pricey over a long cook.  The mailbox mod with AMNPS works fine for a lot less money.  I also went with the Auber PID controller with a custom re-wire of the oven so I can smoke cheese.  I was going to use a 3" stack with a damper, but Menards only had the top cap in 4" when I was there.  I've smoked a lot of good stuff in it 
 
Looks good Kingdemo...   I see that your vent must have been an offset from the back burner too...  i don't know why they changed them...   They used to come straight up through the middle of the right rear element - would make for a much smoother install...  

I have a schematic for it now - and in the next few days, I'm going to back into the wiring and "re-enable" the upper broiler .   I was in a hurry when I found that the upper worked on a 110 cycle in the " Bake " setting , so I just disabled it.

Most of the functions on this one are separated - and when possible still run through the original knobs to be able to shut them off too...

Here's the heat turned off with smoke generator running for cheese .....

 
Last edited:
Hey Cool, now all you have to do is change it out for your Wife's oven in the Kitchen !!!   She will never know the Difference 
biggrin.gif


Gary
 
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