The Gibson, A pellet fridge project.

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I am making the harness to extend the controller myself.  It's just a couple of small guage wires, nothing complicated.

On to the handle.  I want to do everything on here to the best quality possible within reason.  I'm already into this thing for somewhere around $1000 so when it came to the handle I tried something that worked, but not quite like I wanted it to.  The original handle was in pretty poor shape, chrome was pitted and peeling in places.  While the handle really needed to be stripped down and replated / powder coated I went with a rubberized bedliner type of spray to cover it.  I may take the handle back off in the future, but we'll see how this works out for the time being.  I wire brushed the handle and base like crazy to remove any of the chipping and loose chrome, then sprayed the whole thing.  Ended up having to remove some of the coating on the sides because the handle will not function  with the extra thickness.  Not terribly happy but may have to re-address this in the future.



All insulated up, ready for the tub.


Tub in place.  good thing I had some friends over while doing this, it's a bit of a tight fit by the controller box and getting the tub in place was fairly interesting.  I'm going to add the extra supports that were all the way around the original tub (you can see the mounting holes) with new aluminum bracketing as my aluminum mounts for the trays / surround covered up the originals.


Pellet pro in, wiring started.  I think I'm going to have to paint the hopper lid.  Probaby same color as the fridge.

 
Little more progress.  Controller / hopper wired up.  Tested all the wiring, hopper seems to be working correctly.


Also got the switches wired in as well as the socket.  Now just to paint the covers to match all the other trim.


Ooh getting so close!  Just have to:

Get ventilation system in order, finish up fire pot deflectors and get the door skin on and flashing around the tub along with the seal.  Also have to finish bottom trim and we're almost there!
 
I love how you did your shelves. I wish I would've thought of that. Great looking build. Looking forward to seeing pics of what that bad boy puts out.
 
I love how you did your shelves. I wish I would've thought of that. Great looking build. Looking forward to seeing pics of what that bad boy puts out.
Thanks,  trust me when I said the build went on a hiatus trying to figure out what I wanted to do for shelving!  I kept getting new ideas and running them through but nothing really stuck until I found those shelves and brackets.  Sometimes it's the surprising things that work out the best.
 
Haven't decided 100% on the gasket yet, been seriously looking at lavalock for the ease of self-stick.  I have to hang the door first to measure the gap before ordering the seal.  

On an update note:  Will be ordering the sheet aluminum for the door and trim here shortly so should be back on track again.
 
Well after a bit of a hiatus, the build is back on.  Finally got around to ordering everything I need, only thing left to get is the gasket for the door which I will order when I get the door hung again to measure the gap.

Some notables:  I went with a AC Infinity Axial (model 1238) 120mm fan for supplying the extra airflow through the fridge.  Has the capability of moving 110 CFM so it should be adequate 
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  There were a couple of options provided by the company for regulating fan speed, and I wanted to be able to control the speed) but none really fit how I wanted it to mount.  Will be controlling speed with a electrical light dimmer.  Not normally the best option for motors, but this motor is only 18W so it shouldn't be a big issue.  The light dimmer I got has a CFL option which gives a boost at power on which helps kick start the fan at lower speeds.

I had decided to mount the fan on the following mounts I had found at summit racing.  They are 4" mounting flanges, and fairly inexpensive.  As is usually the case with trying to make things work there are sometimes issues.  In this case the fan is slightly larger than the mounting plate, so I'm using some gasket around the outside of the flange to seal the fan to the flange better. Seems like it should work out.  Just got a new CNC router too so maybe I'll make up a proper adapter plate when I have some extra time.



Got all of the sheet aluminum I needed for the trim and door.  Went with .0625 sheet as I've seen some builds with flashing and don't like how easily the flashing get dinged and dented.  Got all the tub surround done, today it's time for the door trim.


Unfortunately in my fairly nice neighbor hood there has been folks rummaging through cars etc, and since this smoker will be cooking on the driveway as it's stored in the garage, has necessitated some additional modifications.  So, I'm adding a commercial grade burglar alarm to the smoker, maybe even access control to the door.  Should be interesting.
 
Note to self: When building fridge, make sure the wheels are adequate. Don't make the mistake I did and put 2" wheels in the stock locations! Fridge almost falls over when the door opens, that sucker is heavy! Can't even imagine what a door with a significant amount of steel would weigh.

Guess I'll probably end up with a steel frame with the wheels attached to it like I've seen on some of the others here.

Also, when drilling holes for rivets, when you don't seem to be cutting anymore, there might be something you're running into.




Gasket is ordered, went with 9141K923 from McMaster Carr. Gap in the door is fairly significant and I couldn't find any of the lavalock etc in the proper thickness (3/4").  Plus I wanted it to be compressible enough to conform to any differences in gap size.  For the record over by the hinges, the gap is right about 1/2".
 
Great Looking Build. You know you love your smoker when an anti theft device gets installed.

I would probably put that on milk carton if it went missing!

May I ask why the vent is only half way on the side vs going out the top? Also, what is the best way to cut a hole for exhaust so the tub and outside holes line up. Do you cut with the tub and instalaation installed?

Point to you sir!
 
 
Great Looking Build. You know you love your smoker when an anti theft device gets installed.

I would probably put that on milk carton if it went missing!

May I ask why the vent is only half way on the side vs going out the top? Also, what is the best way to cut a hole for exhaust so the tub and outside holes line up. Do you cut with the tub and instalaation installed?

Point to you sir!
Thanks for the points!

To answer a couple of the questions:

  Side vent:  Trying something new!  I kind of fashioned it after the Cookshack FEC100.  It has a side mount exhaust.  I figure (hope) between the forced air through the pellet hopper and the additional fresh air fan it will circulate the air through the entirety of the cooker offering a more even temp and smoke exposure.  Don't require convection with these forced air units to draw the smoke through the chamber and I figured I'd see what happened.  Worst case I cover up the vents and put a high mount on it!

  Cutting holes: I used a jigsaw for all of my holes and lined them up from inner shell to outer shell with a 12" 1/8" drill bit as markers (Drill through one side, use something to keep the bit square with the shell, I used http://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-Universal-Square-HUS125/203951642, then drill through to the other side).  The porcelain of these tubs will dull drill bits fairly quickly and I didn't want to ruin a $40 hole saw just for a hole or two.  I did look at getting a diamond hole saw, but one use for this didn't really justify the price.
 
So the gasket I ordered... too thick!  I had a gap of 3/8" and ordered 3/4" foam rubber with a hole in the middle.  After mounting the gasket, I figured as soon as I got the door closed and latched any additional would conform.  How'd that go?  Not too good!  Couldn't get the door to latch, just way way too thick.  After removing the gasket and cleaning off all the silicon, I measured it and uncompressed it is nearly 7/8" thick.  Oh well, sometimes you just have to try things and see how it goes.  I reordered my gasket, in a slightly different style at 5/8" wide and 3/8" thick from Mcmaster Carr, part #9141K157.  This stuff measures at just a smidge less than 1/2" uncompressed when I received it today.  Plopped it in the door jamb and closed the door.  Nice solid catch on the door, looks to finally be the right part!  Mounting tonight!

Second failure of this build was wheel size.  I went with some tiny 2" casters, no good!  They ended up not rolling very smoothly when all the weight of the door and everything else got mounted so I replaced them with some 5" casters.  I may eventually build a nice frame for the casters but the additional aluminum mounts combined with the original mount points seem to be holding pretty good right now.  Significant difference in rolling, oh so much sweeter! Pic shows the original 2", damn thing looks down right silly compared to those 5" casters.


Fan cutout on the back of the smoker before mounting anything.


Silicone tube to connect the 2 flanges cut to size.


Vent fan mounted and ready to rock.  because of the size differences between the flange and the fan, spinning the flange and adding the gasket provides 100% seal for the airflow.  Also added a fan filter to the back to prevent critters and large debris to be sucked into the cook chamber.


Side 99% finished.  Will cover that one box with a blanking plate and will be the mounting location for the keypad for the alarm system when hooked up.  Unfortunately one of my plates got delayed in shipping.

All controls as follows:  

  Upper two switches:

    Left  is main power.  Controls all ac to the entire chassis.  I even have an additional 110V plug under the fridge in the compressor compartment for add ons down the road.

    Right is pellet power.  Additional power control for the pellet hopper.

  Bottom switch:

     Controls on/off of auxillary fan and dimmer switch control speed.

  Power on side for adding thermometers / lights etc.


So close I can almost taste the smoke now!
 
If someone were to insult you by asking how much you'd sell this beauty for, and you were to indulge said idiot with a realistic answer, what would it be? Or if you were to build one of these again, and sell it, what would you look for?
 
If someone were to insult you by asking how much you'd sell this beauty for, and you were to indulge said idiot with a realistic answer, what would it be? Or if you were to build one of these again, and sell it, what would you look for?
I thought about doing just such a thing for a brief second, then realized what I would have to charge to make it worth while!    Problem lies in adapting anything, and the "engineering" time spent in such an endeavor.  Profit in this type of thing comes in multiples generally not on one offs.  Think custom cars etc.  I've seen much less customized fridges being sold for 3 - 4K.  I'm not saying mine is worth such a sum, as I am a bit of a perfectionist and this thing is far from it, but it suits me just fine.

To answer the question in a round about way.  If I had another fridge, exact same model and in better shape than this one was in to begin with, and if it was sent out for some professional paint work I'd probably have to sell it for 8 -10 K to be worth it.  If I had a fleet of the fridges and better metalworking tools, probably in the range of 6 - 8K. And those would all be far superior to the "beta" model I have :) 
 
She lives!!!  Finally breathing a bit of smoke.  Ran it through some test paces and came to a couple of conclusions:
  • These things take a hot minute to cool down once up to temp!  Burned it in for a while at 350, then dropped to 180 to run for a while, took forever (see #2) but it initally went from 70 to 350 in about 7 minutes.
  • Had to take the cover off of the auxillary fan.  Think it was lowing the airflow too much.  Left the fan at 100% for the rest of the nights burn and it really seems to help even out the temps.
  • Today ran it again and made a spreadsheet of all the temps.  I think adding a proper heatshield to the burnpot and a drip pan will help even the temperatures even more, but pretty stoked with how even this thing is from top to bottom right now.  Temps are using the RTD probe, the extra food probe from Smoke Daddy and the 2 probes from my new Maverick ET-733. 
  • Planning my weekend cook now :)


 
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Well did a couple of cooks this weekend with mixed results.  Temps maintained with the fans but ended up with some backburn down the auger on a long cook. 

Did some more testing tonight: I did the bag test tonight (placing bag over hopper with door open, rule is if the bag fills with air there is not enough exhaust). With no auxillary fan running the bag did not inflate, it would puff just a little when the fan in the hopper started blowing hard, but with no aux fan that was not much.

Turned the aux fan on full tilt and temperatures came down (Even on this beautiful 83 degree evening) but then the hopper went into overdrive.

Part of my issue with the build is making some wrong assumptions about the way the pellet pro operated. I thought it would have a more constant fan drive (thus being a forced draft unit) and not requiring the regular benefits of a exhaust chimney. However when temp is reached, and this thing is insulated with no aux fan and forced draft does not occur thus necessitating either a chimney for the side mount exhaust, and / or a higher mounted exhaust to evacuate the heat to maintain temp (setpoint tonight 225, no aux fan it stayed at 239 for a while). The aux fan does provide extra airflow and provides the forced draft however it would require a lot of tweaking and testing to get the airflow to the proper level without causing back pressure into the hopper, which I am thinking is probably what happened as I had the aux fan full tilt most of the cook this past weekend..

Now to work into next steps. I'm thinking of putting an elbow on the current exhaust port, and then creating a chimney to the top of the fridge.  That should provide a sizeable amount of convection airflow through the smoker when it is in temp hold while maintaining the supposed benefits of the side mount exhaust.

Thing about custom smokers, is sometimes you venture into areas not yet traveled and you have to rethink.  C'est la vie.
 
So after doing a bit of looking around, decided to try a little something different on the exhaust.  Going to use this adapter to a 6" exhaust stack on the side to create a bit of natural draft through the smoker.  Sometimes going outside of the norm requires a bit of testing and trials, I'm ok with that. Hopefully this will create a decent draft through the unit.

 
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