Time to build a new cooker!

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dlnida

Newbie
Original poster
May 24, 2012
29
10
Lake Stevens Wa
Ok, so I've been drooling over everyones designs and trying to come up with my own blueprint.  Pages and pages of note book paper, napkins, paper plates, plotting and scheming on a cooker. Months to finalize my design, involving 55 gal drums and a custom built sidebox.  And then I found two metal wheel barrows on the side of the road with a free sign and everything goes up in smoke!{bad pun, I know}

So, with the "free to me" start I've decided to try to build as inexpensively as possible, using as much scrap metal as I and my buddies have laying about our yards. That being said, I started the burn out and totally forgot to document anything so far.

Q-view tomorrow, I promise! 
 
DL, morning......  I'm in for the build.....   
popcorn.gif
 ....  Dave
 






My little "helper" showing the reason I can't get too far.


the piece of wood is temporary, i just needed it for alignment purposes. 

I plan on running another piece of angle material on the bottom, and using the 

upper holes to mount a work surface/cutting board. I want to use as much

"nut and bolt" construction as possible since my welding skills are limited 

to welding wrenches to fenders with car batteries.  
 
Sorry for being gone for awhile. Had to recover after shoulder surgery, and as soon as I can get my new phone to play nice with the computer, I'll have some progress pics to post!
 
Sorry for being gone for awhile. Had to recover after shoulder surgery, and as soon as I can get my new phone to play nice with the computer, I'll have some progress pics to post!
 






Well, it took a bit longer than I wanted to get to this point, but not to bad after(sorta) healing up from shoulder surgery.  Total out lay on the project so far is about $40, and most of that has been on the stainless steel hardware common to the cooking areas.
 
Ok, got to looking at the pix and realized I'd posted them a little out of chronological order. So I figured a little description would be in order.  The wheel barrow section is going to be a charcoal grill with a propane torch to help with ignition.  The barrel will be (kinda) a UDS that I am planning to heat with a propane burner.  The chimney for the grill will be plumbed into the UDS as well, with a ball valve.  The space between the grill and UDS will house a propane burner, which I will have a cast iron griddle over. This will be used for onions, with enough burner space around it for setting a pot or two on for boiling if needs be.  The UDS will have an additional separate box for smoke generation, which I'm thinking an A-Maze-N will get the duty of.  The open space under the frame work will have a steel file cabinet on the right hand side, while the left will house the propane tank(s).  So far, everything has gone together with nuts and bolts, but I have a buddy with both a TIG and MIG setups who is more than willing to weld for beer and smoked food.  And as far as the propane plumbing goes, I have another friend who installs gas fire places and stoves/cook tops who is willing to help for the same pay scale, plus parts.  I have found a local steel company that will sell anything out of their remnant pile for .70/lbs, and they have a large supply of the bare expanded steel.
 
ok, so I went and bought enough expanded metal to do (i think) all of my cooking surfaces, with 3 or maybe even 4 racks in the smoker, and came up to about what I've been able to price out for one replacement round grill at the local hardware stores. if i do this right, I might even have enough material for a charcoal basket in the grill! I'll try to get some work in on it tomorrow and get some more pics to post 
 
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