My first metalworking project, done on the cheap. An offset smoker / pizza oven / grill / nuclear submarine: The Red October

Authored by imgur.com and submitted by cheese_on_bread

And there we have it, my first metalworking project. It was a foolish brag, wasn’t it? A smoker in two weekends. Quick and dirty. I realised quite soon that it certainly wasn’t going to be quick, but I’m pleasantly surprised at how not-dirty it is. I guess it’s because you can’t half-ass it with steel; it either fits, or not, and I respect that.. Should you attempt this? If you’re working with the tools and materials I had, hell, no. I’ve probably got 150 hours in this over four months in this and my wife doesn’t recognise the dishevelled coal miner that seems to be living in her house. But then, I also love it, and enjoyed working with metal. I wonder which project I’ll pick to do next…

IAMARomanGodAMA on February 27th, 2018 at 18:10 UTC »

Fortunately, G___ had actually worked in a shipyard building nuclear submarines. Unfortunately, it appears the only tool he used was a clipboard. Fortunately, this means we had a qualified engineer on the team. Unfortunately, I did the engineering.

Just - thank you for the write-up on this. It's an absolute blast.

Nash_Rambler on February 27th, 2018 at 15:57 UTC »

"The world will shalivate at the shound of our shizzling meats. The order is: engage the shmoking compartment."

cheese_on_bread on February 27th, 2018 at 14:23 UTC »

Oh, and you didn't think I'd leave you hanging withougt showing the results, did you? Test run here: https://imgur.com/a/NuBTp

Edit: Dog tax: https://i.imgur.com/lPtnwPp.jpg

And a bit more explanation of the first firing that imgur didnt put below the gif: So the time had come to test the beast and we decided to do chicken and bacon, as they’re pretty easy. I lit a small charcoal fire, and when that died down, out a couple of logs on. The temperature started coming up, but then fell back off. It was at this point that things got more than a little fraught. Why wouldn’t it come up to temp?? Well, it turns out that 400lb of steel just takes ages to heat up, much longer than the crappy smoker I’d used before. When it got up to temp, it just sat there, steady as you like, with minimal attention. I now know that ‘I need to start the fire early, and use plenty of charcoal to heat the whole thing. Also, the mahogany that I’m using takes a good amount of heat to really get going.