What the heck did I just buy? BGE clone? (picture heavy)

DriverWild said:

This isn't a winter project it's a 3 hour project at most. The technique below works for my Big Green Egg so I'm going to assume your kamado will be able to withstand the intense heat in the correct process of cleaning a ceramic. That being said I don't know what it's rated at so do this at your own risk...

Whatever you do, don't use a chemical inside to try to clean it up. The proper way to clean a ceramic is to burn it out. Put a hefty load of charcoal in, light it, get it super hot, open vents all the way with the lid closed. Everything inside will turn white as snow. Also, don't replace your gasket before doing this procedure, change it out after as it will probably burn up, the glue will surely melt. Do not insert your grill grid as it will warp from the high temp. The exterior will be sizzling hot so don't touch it, not even the handle, just let it burn. After it cools use a shop-vac to pull the dust out.

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Yeah, that was my concern as well. The dude at the BGE dealer today seemed to think it could take heat like a BGE can. I guess if I overheat it then it'll crack? I guess I'm only out $50 then. And I can probably sell the table and get the $50 back.

Maybe it's best that I find out anyways. I've already got a WSM so I don't really need another smoker.

dadsr4 said:

I've read here that high heat cooks on your cooker are a no-no, it will crack.

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Too late :mrgreen:

First thing I did tonight was remove the old rusted draft door. As I said before the bolts holding it on were completely rusted so I had to use a dremel and cut off the heads from the front. Here's a before:



Here's an after:



There's no saving that draft door so I had purchased one from an egg dealer by the house. They had a slightly damaged one sitting on a shelf so they sold it to me for about half of list price. Hopefully the holes line up. We'll find out tomorrow.

But at that point I wanted to go ahead and try to burn it out. Here are a couple before pics.





Filled it up to the top of the firebox with some Ozark Oak and put a few Weber starter cubes in there to get it going.



Once the fire got going I closed the lid and let it go for a while. I saw a bit of flame coming out the top so I know it got good and scorched inside there.



While it was firing I saw a couple very small cracks on the lid that I don't remember seeing previously. I may just not have been inspecting that closely previously or maybe the heat caused it the cracks to become more prominent or maybe I created them by getting it so hot. I'm not sure.

I did lift the lid a little to inspect and it was getting dark so I couldn't tell a whole bunch but the build up around the edge where the gasket would normally go is definitely breaking down in to ash. So I'm hopeful the stuff inside the dome did the same. We'll see tomorrow morning I guess. I'll take it all apart and try to scrape out whatever buildup remains.

I did want to see about getting some refractory cement to patch the fire ring back together. Has anyone found this stuff at the big box stores? I see it on Amazon but I'd rather try to find some locally so I can get it done tomorrow.

Thought I'd give a little update in here.

The inside cleaned up real nicely. Most of the built up crud burned off and what was left was pretty easily brushed away. I didn't spend too much time scraping everything away - it didn't need to be spotless, just the really big stuff removed.



Around the rim of the lid and the base there's still pretty good build up because the fire didn't really hit this area. I tried brushing it and scraping it a little with a paint scraper but it's just not coming off easily. I'm thinking about going after it with a wire brush or something with my dremel. Maybe even a small diamond bur or something. Obviously I don't want to damage the pot but at the same time I need the gasket to stick and be mostly air tight.



While washing out the base I discovered a little crack. It's not terrible but it does go all the way through to the bottom. I've ordered some refractory cement to repair the fire ring. I was thinking I'll just put a layer of the cement on the whole inside bottom surface to form a protective layer that may prevent any further cracking. Good idea or bad? How thick should it be?



You can see the crack is also on the front side where the vent normally is. I don't think I'll do anything to it here. Was planning on just focusing on the inside of the base.



I was also thinking about repainting it since the paint is fading. I wanted to keep it green. I was thinking about the Rust-Oleum 7752830 High Heat Enamel Spray listed on Amazon. Anyone have experience with this kind of paint?

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