Meant to get this out last week, but better late than never. Apologies for the length of this post - it grew on me.
SHORT ATTENTION SPAN SUMMARY - Everything worked well. Pictures below.
DETAILS - I burned in and seasoned my brand new Limo Jr. with Flaxseed oil (LINK), just because it seemed like a good idea and I could. It worked pretty well, and gave a hard, non-sticky coat on everything. It did have kind of a funky smell though that didn't carry over to the food on my first cook the next day. My driver for using Flaxseed oil was the hope that it MIGHT be less sticky and less likely to go rancid sitting for an extended period. Hey, if it's good for furniture, it's got to be good for a smoker, right?
For the burn in, my fireboard 2 and all six probes were used to see what grate temps looked like. Left rear and right front on each rack. I only had two of the fat ambient probes, two of the curved food probes, and two of the long competition probes.
I used Walmart Expert Grill Five Star oak and hickory blend charcoal briquettes, with a half-chimney going in first to get things started.
LESSON LEARNED - I didn't like all the little burning charcoal pieces hitting the top of my purty new smoker when the chimney was dumped in, so going forward the starter chimney method is out. The follow-up cook was started with a couple of tumbleweeds on a chunk of wood under the charcoal grate, which worked fine.
After dumping a little less than about half the remaining 16 lb bag of charcoal in, temps started coming up well on their own. When the fireboard fan was started chamber temp came up fast. Initially, the fan was limited to 50% speed (which is 50% flow), or about 10 cfm to match the typical Pit Viper fan rating. That was clamped to 20% (4 cfm) in about an hour for the rest of the burn in, and in an empty pit that was more than enough air. I played with the setpoint a little as seen in the below plot just to see how the pit would respond, and everything worked amazingly well. You can see from the plot that the bottom rack right front was about 10-15 deg high compared the most of the other probes, and was the only outlier, which is good. This supports what I saw later from my first cook that the bottom rack is a hair hotter and has a little more variation around the edges, but that should be expected. Overall the temperature variation top to bottom and front to back was pretty good. Afterwards it was obvious that the heat plate in the bottom was mispositioned a little after it was oiled and put back in, and was too far towards the back of the chamber.
LESSON LEARNED - Pay attention to how you have the heat plate centered front to back when you start, and adjust as needed. For the later cook, it was just centered evenly.
FIREBOARD 2 OBSERVATIONS (for what it's worth) - 1) The fan speed control PID settings work, but are too aggressive for the Limo Jr. and the 20cfm fan, even speed limited. It would be really nice if you could get to the tuning settings, i.e., gain, integral time, and derivative to tweak, even if it was some goofy hidden "CTRL-ALT-!" type menu. 2) The fireboard LID mode needs a manual reset on it. My LID detection time, which turns the fan off when it detects the smoker lid/door open, was set to 5 minutes. It only took a minute or two to do what was needed most of the time and get the door closed, but you have to wait the LID timer out to start the fan back, or go through a convoluted dance to swap from AUTO to MANUAL fan and back to AUTO. This needs a button on the app to reset this timer. 3) Some kind of "Fire Out" detection would be a nice-to-have, with the capability to either alarm, shut down the fan, or both. During the burn in the fire went out about midnight, and the fan proceeded to go to max speed and blow ash throughout the cook chamber. Minor, but annoying. Good thing the fan was limited to 20% too or it really would have made a mess.
SHORT ATTENTION SPAN SUMMARY - Everything worked well. Pictures below.
DETAILS - I burned in and seasoned my brand new Limo Jr. with Flaxseed oil (LINK), just because it seemed like a good idea and I could. It worked pretty well, and gave a hard, non-sticky coat on everything. It did have kind of a funky smell though that didn't carry over to the food on my first cook the next day. My driver for using Flaxseed oil was the hope that it MIGHT be less sticky and less likely to go rancid sitting for an extended period. Hey, if it's good for furniture, it's got to be good for a smoker, right?
For the burn in, my fireboard 2 and all six probes were used to see what grate temps looked like. Left rear and right front on each rack. I only had two of the fat ambient probes, two of the curved food probes, and two of the long competition probes.
I used Walmart Expert Grill Five Star oak and hickory blend charcoal briquettes, with a half-chimney going in first to get things started.
LESSON LEARNED - I didn't like all the little burning charcoal pieces hitting the top of my purty new smoker when the chimney was dumped in, so going forward the starter chimney method is out. The follow-up cook was started with a couple of tumbleweeds on a chunk of wood under the charcoal grate, which worked fine.
After dumping a little less than about half the remaining 16 lb bag of charcoal in, temps started coming up well on their own. When the fireboard fan was started chamber temp came up fast. Initially, the fan was limited to 50% speed (which is 50% flow), or about 10 cfm to match the typical Pit Viper fan rating. That was clamped to 20% (4 cfm) in about an hour for the rest of the burn in, and in an empty pit that was more than enough air. I played with the setpoint a little as seen in the below plot just to see how the pit would respond, and everything worked amazingly well. You can see from the plot that the bottom rack right front was about 10-15 deg high compared the most of the other probes, and was the only outlier, which is good. This supports what I saw later from my first cook that the bottom rack is a hair hotter and has a little more variation around the edges, but that should be expected. Overall the temperature variation top to bottom and front to back was pretty good. Afterwards it was obvious that the heat plate in the bottom was mispositioned a little after it was oiled and put back in, and was too far towards the back of the chamber.
LESSON LEARNED - Pay attention to how you have the heat plate centered front to back when you start, and adjust as needed. For the later cook, it was just centered evenly.
FIREBOARD 2 OBSERVATIONS (for what it's worth) - 1) The fan speed control PID settings work, but are too aggressive for the Limo Jr. and the 20cfm fan, even speed limited. It would be really nice if you could get to the tuning settings, i.e., gain, integral time, and derivative to tweak, even if it was some goofy hidden "CTRL-ALT-!" type menu. 2) The fireboard LID mode needs a manual reset on it. My LID detection time, which turns the fan off when it detects the smoker lid/door open, was set to 5 minutes. It only took a minute or two to do what was needed most of the time and get the door closed, but you have to wait the LID timer out to start the fan back, or go through a convoluted dance to swap from AUTO to MANUAL fan and back to AUTO. This needs a button on the app to reset this timer. 3) Some kind of "Fire Out" detection would be a nice-to-have, with the capability to either alarm, shut down the fan, or both. During the burn in the fire went out about midnight, and the fan proceeded to go to max speed and blow ash throughout the cook chamber. Minor, but annoying. Good thing the fan was limited to 20% too or it really would have made a mess.
Last edited:
