my hybrid clone progress

Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 8:07 pm

You are doing a fine job on that cooker DTB. Can't wait to see it in action.

Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 11:08 pm

Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 11:12 pm

Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 11:18 pm

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 9:58 am

Nice. Were you able to get both sides up to temperature fairly evenly? What do you have to regulate the amount of heat/smoke goes to each side? Can you run only one side if you want?

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 10:22 am

That is one nice lookin cooker! Good work

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 6:32 pm

That is really cool!!

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 8:53 pm

Thanks guys for the compliments, these things are alot of work...more than I had expected and it's nice to hear that people like it. When I first fired it up it took maybe 30 minutes to start climbing, I had lit just one chimney and dumped one more unlit on top. I ran up to home depot to get some more charcoal and when I got back it was at 200. So one hour to get to 200 with the door open. I left the ball valve full open and shut the door, and it climbed to 300 in another hour. I then choked the valve off and it stayed at 280-300 for maybe 3 hours before starting to drop. Then I cracked the valve 25% and it started climbing slowly again. When it hit 300 again I backed the valve to maybe 10%. I opened both chamber doors and fanned them till temp was 150 or so and shut them. It recovered in 3 minutes tops and climbed right back to 300. So I cut the valve to just a sliver and fanned the chamber doors again and it recovered just as quick to 250 but slower to 300. It was starting to get late so I opened the ball valve 100% and in 1 hr it was 380.

I would like to keep this thing at 250, does it sound like the firebox is too big to you guys? Is it normal to have the ball valve at 5%? My plan is to put dampers over the openings into the cooking chambers to have 2 independent chambers. If the firebox is too big, I could easily slide something down the chute to take up space to decrease the effective size of it. What do you think?

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 9:10 pm

Everything happens slowly in these, heating up and cooling down. Sounds to me that your heat got away a little and once you get all that metal hot it stays there. When I'm done cooking and dump out my coal it's still over 100 for several hours with no fire at all. When cooking I can have my door open for quite a while and it bounces back pretty quick. When I was just using a ball valve for control it wasn't open very far at all.

Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 10:24 pm

I like everything about your cooker... its innovative, stylish-ly retro looking with the handles, nice sized cabinets with the potential to steer heat, look ma, no chimney and the welding looks like a stack of nickles that fell over nice.

Did you use any gasket material? Also, I could not tell from the pictures where you made openings from the grate area to let the smoke/heat into each cook chamber. How much "burning coal" volume do you have based on the LxW of the grate where the coals are and the height of the openings to the cook chambers?

Try cooking some meat and see how it does. If your meat comes out sooty on a 225 cook that would indicate the coal bed is too big and does not want to be choked down. I had that issue with a 8"x20" coal bed.

Way to break some new ground !

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 12:32 am

I love this thing! With Royal Oak and the valve at 30% it is locked on 250°. Both chambers run identical, and I am surprised at how sensitive the ball valve is. Not near the battle to control temps like my chargriller. Both chambers ran at 225-250 for 14 hrs. on 15-17 lbs. of Royal Oak. I ran out of material to finish all of the racks and only got 5 done but seasoned it anyway..

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 12:36 am

I had to get something in it....

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 12:44 am

Very moist, and great texture. Didn't add to much flavor to it, just a good rub down. I didn't want to cover up anything the smoker was adding....if that makes any sense.

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:16 am

Bro Gary, I had originally purchased 5/8" stove rope. I wanted the doors to be flush mount, and I didn't want the rope mounted to the door, so I had to make a flange for the rope to be glued to and for the doors to shut against. I used 1/2" X 1/2" angle and "picture framed" all the door openings. The spacing from the face of the frame to the 1/2"angle was fairly critical (I found out later), the 5/8" rope didn't compress as much as I thought it would, so I replaced it all with 3/8" rope.

The firebox is roughly 10"x10" with roughly a 4.5"x6.5" hole 1.75" above the grate. The heat/smoke enters the cooking chambers at the top center of the two central walls, and exits below the bottoms racks on the opposite sides, if that makes any sense.

Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 6:56 am

Dir-T-Birds wrote:

Bro Gary, I had originally purchased 5/8" stove rope. I wanted the doors to be flush mount, and I didn't want the rope mounted to the door, so I had to make a flange for the rope to be glued to and for the doors to shut against. I used 1/2" X 1/2" angle and "picture framed" all the door openings. The spacing from the face of the frame to the 1/2"angle was fairly critical (I found out later), the 5/8" rope didn't compress as much as I thought it would, so I replaced it all with 3/8" rope.

The firebox is roughly 10"x10" with roughly a 4.5"x6.5" hole 1.75" above the grate. The heat/smoke enters the cooking chambers at the top center of the two central walls, and exits below the bottoms racks on the opposite sides, if that makes any sense.

With that description then, it appears you have built a Stump/Backwoods clone. With the dimensions of the firebox you have given, your fire is approx 10"x 10"x 6.25"high. I would have made the grate even with the bottom of the opening not the 1.75" below. What you may end up doing is making the opening smaller than the 4.5", maybe down to 3". The last thing you want to do is to have to "choke" the fire down to maintain your ideal temp. This will lead to some very unpleasant tasting meats. As Fast Murray said, it is best to catch the temp on the way up and start to cut the ball valve than get to the temp you want and then cut it back. It will overshoot it every time. Once you get it figured out you will be cooking like a pro.