Finished up my mini. Thanks.

So I have been reading post after post on this forum and the smoking meat forum about building a mini. I took ideas from about 5 different builds and incorporated them into my build. Thanks you Dan Mulls for helping locate a part.

Big thanks to everyone else who offers up information on this forum also. Its so nice to be able to ask a question and get a bunch of feed back right away.

I pop riveted the pot lid to the bottom of the pot and like that fit much better.

So I used vht engine primer, enamel and clear coat for the paint process. I ordered the Fighting Irish guy and the AZ cardinal off ebay. They werent the right stencil so it took me hours cutting with a exacto knife. We'll see how the paint hold up over time.

The difuser was one of the things that i was driving me crazy but I finally decided to just go with a hole on the bottom, leaving 3 tabs to hold up a cake pan. Went with 2 cooking racks and made a 4" high charcoal basket. I will use a can for the ash cover and might add some weber vents to the side if i need to. I'm gonna do a few smokes this way first and see how things go.

Again thanks for all the input.

That's a dang good looking Mini, enjoy your cooks in it

Matt your mini looks great, how long did you wait before you applied the clear coat, and removed the stencils.

Looks great. It'd be cool to see pics of the inside. Have fun gunking it up!

Joe - SmokinJoe said:

Matt your mini looks great, how long did you wait before you applied the clear coat, and removed the stencils.

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Thanks. I primed it and painted it at night and then tried to take the stencil off after about 3 hours of drying. I peeled one little spot and could tell it was going to peel some paint so I let it dry over night and then peeled the stencil. I then clearcoated it and heat cured it in the oven at 200 degrees. The time between paint and clear coat was about 12 hours.