A neighbor posted this free smoker in our neighborhood Facebook group. I asked him if it was sturdy, heavy gauge steel. He replied affirmative. So the girls and I drove over to his house and loaded it up.
It’s a little smaller than what I thought it would be, but decided that that would be okay. I’m not going to be cooking multiple briskets at the same time. And even if I needed to, I still have my trusty Kamado Joe. This smoker is more of a project smoker. My initial thought that “project” would be project cooking. But when I got it into the backyard, I thought it could use a little TLC. Both dampers are rusted in a partially-open position, so I’ve doused them both with some penetrating liquid catalyst. As I type this, neither damper will budge. I haven’t taken wrenches to them yet, so that’ll be another day. If I need to, I might just cut off/out the dampers and fabricate new ones. This is when I’m glad I’ve been teaching myself how to work with metal and have bought the tools to do the job.
My first project was to fabricate new handles for the smoke chamber and the fire box. We had some scrap heavy gauge steel tubing at work that I cut and welded to make for rotating lift handles.
I’ll probably get anxious and want to try cooking with it next weekend. After that I’ll talk myself into cleaning it up really well, taking a knotted wire wheel to it, treating the exterior parts with some phosphoric acid, and oiling everything else after I get the rust off it. I could probably leave it as-is and it’ll outlast me, but I figured this could be a good project to keep me busy.