How do you know you have enough draft / airflow in stick burner?

Okay, this might seem like a weird question...

But, how do you know you have good draft / airflow in your RF offset smoker? How do you know if you have too much? Can you have too much?
I've built my own a few years ago and ran it around 30 times, always having some kind of trouble. I think I have pretty good draft, but I'm not entirely sure.
At the time of my build, I studied all the builds very closely and modeled mine after Feldon's calculator and then added some 50% to the critical points (throat size, area under RF plate and the gap at the end, firebox is 109%).

I mean, the fire burns nicely and splits catch fire immediately. But, I have a really hard time maintaining a small fire, I have to choke down the intake air almost closed and sometimes the fire will go out if I do that.
But if I open it even a hair more, I get a raging fire with flames almost up to the firebox top. Granted, I oversized my inlets a lot (like almost 300-500%) according to Feldon's calculator so I might need to close them down permanently a bit.
Also my splits burn in around 15-20 minutes, so that doesn't seem right... They are a little bit bigger than my wrist.

The food never tastes bitter, quite the opposite, the smoke flavor is very very subdued. I know it should be subtle with stick burner, but I've never had BBQ from other stick burners with this little smoke flavor. I mainly burn Oak, Hickory or stronger woods aren't available here.

I'm getting kinda tired battling with this smoker, almost seems that she's impossible to control. I've read all the guides to stick burning and I think I'm not doing anything wrong, smoke is sweet blue to translucent.

Thanks for the suggestions,

I believe my wood could be the culprit, being too dry. I guess there isn't a scientific way to verify? I even had a moisture meter, but I broke it. It suggested the woods were between 10 and 15% relative moisture, so pretty dry.

I have some Oak that's been seasoned (by me) only for a few months, maybe I'll try that for giggles. That should still be way too green, no? Also have some plum wood that is barely seasoned.

Sometimes I start with lump/briquettes to get a good coal bed, but sometimes I start with burning down enough wood for the coal bed. I do tend to lose the coal bed no matter what, so that might also suggest too dry wood?

Actually my door hinges broke, so currently I don't have a door at all. After a long time I fired her up without the door and the temp control wasn't as bad as usually. I burned different wood this time, though.

And I guess I was able to maintain lower temperatures because a lot of heat escaped out of the missing door :-D

I'll snag a video next time I'm smoking with it to give you an idea of the fire size and how it's burning. Usually I have two splits burning next to each other.

SmittyJonz said:

Usually Hotter cuz max airflow - raging Fire.

Click to expand...

Not for me, I clearly lose heat every time I even open the FB door :-o

akoda said:

nice thread, I have the same question on too much draft.

I have a Shirley and I would like a little more smoke flavor. My wood is not too dry. I have been closing my main exhaust and routing it through my warming box and out that exhaust, I think that makes the smoke spend more time in the chamber. I have wondered about something to put in the main to create some chaos for the smoke, my thought was one of those wind whirly magigs but in some type of steel.

Click to expand...

I once achieved a nice smoke flavor and consistent heat with my homebuilt RF managing the fire like this:

I had a lot of coals going on and a few really really small splits that barely kept burning. I closed my intake to the point they kept burning, but with really small flame.

I guess this isn't really how it's supposed to work, but it worked that one time. Just took a lot of effort to keep the fire just burning. Like constant fiddling with everything. And also I needed to add coals really often, since those two small splits didn't coal worth a dime.

Hmm, I tried with the green Oak. It actually burned pretty nice, as long as I had a few other dry splits in there with it. That's also a part of my problem, I can't seem to keep a fire burning without at least 3-4 splits at once, it almost feels like the firebox is so big that it won't "heat up".

I did a test run without the door, I needed to maintain way bigger fire than with the door, so clearly a lot of heat escapes that way. Is that normal? Or is my draft lacking?

Also some smoke escaped that way.

Here's what I needed to do to maintain 300F. Also kept once again losing the coal bed, only way to keep it would be to add 3-4 splits at once, and that would raise the temps too high.

[ame="https://youtu.be/I9OyiD965Ts"]https://youtu.be/I9OyiD965Ts[/ame]

I guess I'll need to weld the door on and do some more testing... And I smoked a pork collar, it got four hours of smoke and there was no smoke taste.

I also smoked a similar pork collar in my BGE, the same amount of smoking time and it was way oversmoked.