Second Generation Prototype Vertical

mykeystoy said:

I have been following this since this spring and love the concept. The french doors make it unique and lighter doors than it may otherwise have. I can't wait to see it in action and get your feedback. I do have one question for you though. Why not use the same cam type door lock on the firebox? To me anyway since I am not a fabricator at all, it would kinda keep it all together with some uniformity I guess for lack of a more articulate word.

Mike

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Thanks Mike, thought about the same thing but I was concerned the heat in the firebox would warp/otherwise-fark-up the mechanism. Even the heat from welding & bending the handle was enough to start distorting the one on the cook chamber door.

Fabrication finished; y'all meet Ruby





Managed to get the high temp down yesterday & this morning. The paint is Dampney Thurmalox, formulated for painting fireplace inserts and wood stoves; it has about the same specifications as Rustoleum 1200* high temp. I wanted to try it because they offer several color options. We shot it with their high temp primer before the color. You can find a color chart and more info here http://www.dampney.com/.

I won"t be using this stuff again unless somebody really, really, really wants color. It is a pain to shoot, even with our best Devilbiss HVLP and properly sized tip. To get a good surface we had to put an orbital sander on the primer coat and again on the first color coat. The combination of primer and paint is really expensive - like $200 compared to Rustoleum high temp at $15-$20.

We will let the paint cure for a couple days then I'll season her up and try a cook or two.

MSRP if anyone is interested will be $1,700 and I'll be posting it for sale over in Brethren Sales and Ventures soon.

THoey1963 said:

Looks good Dave and that's a decent price range.

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Thanks, but I missed the price point I was aiming for. But, if we cut the fancy color paint and just go with black satin 1200* Rustoleum and make a couple other minor changes in matetials I'm pretty sure I can get these at/below $1,500.

Smoker success; paint fail

Fired her up this morning to season the inside of the cooking chamber and cooking grates. Decided to see how it would run with charcoal in a kinda snake/minion layout. Used about 1/2 a 15 lb bag of Stubbs to lay out the snake/minion and fill a chimney and lit the chimney in the firebox.









It runs like a champ! Came up to temp in an hour (30 minutes on the chimney and 30 minutes after the dumping). Played with the inlet dampers (exhaust wide open) and it is real easy to keep it at 250*-300*. I saw the expected temp variation from bottom to top; bottom rack running consistently 50* hotter than the others but after adding a water pan on the bottom rack at about 3 hours everything evened out and slight inlet adjustments can keep it at a whatever temp I wanted across the remaining 5 racks. Looks like the 7-8 pounds of stumps will run it at +250* for 4-5 hours easy.

Now the "fail" part; this paint sucks! Discolored almost immediately on a rather modest charcoal fire and anywhere the canola oil I used for seasoning hit it caused bubbling and blistering. This stuff is supposed to be 1200* paint and the fire was no where near that. I can't recommend this stuff to anyone and will be taking this cooker back to bare metal for repainting with Rustoleum Ultra, a real PITA but that is what experimentation is all about.



Tomorrow, I'm gonna fire it back up with pecan splits and cook a 20 lb turkey, just for kicks.

SmittyJonz said:

Yay!! Except for the paint! I don't like red anyways! I vote Camo!

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Like a Ford, any color somebody wants as long as they want black. Oh yea, the MSRP included +$200 for this fancy pants paint so it will be about $1,500 (instead of the $1,700 above)

pjtexas1 said:

Sucks about the paint! Are the doors insulated? Not that it matters it still should not have gotten over 1200. Sounds like you designed it properly if your temps were only a few degrees different from top to bottom. I am glad to hear that you didn't have any wild temp swings. I know that if I forget to start closing my intakes soon enough it takes a long time to get the temps back down but that is mostly my fault for refusing to use water in a water cooker. I think you are off on your fuel usage. You will use less charcoal when you use wood chunks.

Looking forward to the first cook.

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No insulation, but I do put firebrick splits on the bottom. I will say the discoloration and damage to the paint is confined to the firebox, the cook chamber seems fine. The temps were pretty much expected based on the other verticals we have built, bottom rack runs 30*-50* hotter than the rest but even that difference went away when we added the water pan. I began cutting back on the intakes when it hit 200* so it just eased up to the 250*-275* range. Tomorrow will be an interesting test running splits, gonna see how it does at 300*-325*, maybe more now that I don't need to baby the paint anymore:becky:

SmittyJonz said:

Let's see it.

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pjtexas1 said:

I want to see it too. Checked his facebook page and didn't see it there.

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Saw it under construction when I visited last month on the way home from Memphis. I'm sure y'all are familiar with Paul & Tyler's vertical warming cabinets that sit on top of their firebox; I think that's about it except it was built like a brick chit house (like all their builds).