Butts on an 18" kettle of unknown vintage

Someone on my street had put an 18" kettle out for trash pickup, so, of course, I stopped by to rescue it. On first inspection, it looks like this baby's seen more than its share of butts over the years:


Thankfully, despite its most recent stint as an ashtray, most of it's in pretty good shape. The lower vents are pretty mangled and the wooden handles have rotted off, but only a few chips and minor dings in the porcelain.

Gonna order up a new set of lower vents and work on locating a set of affordable wooden replacement handles. I'd like to find out how old this one is. There are no markings I can make out on the lid damper, but based on the handle type, I suspect it's from '81-83.

Sounds like a good plan to me. Unfortunately, your picture(s) don't seem to be coming through, for me anymore.

More appropriately “Butts IN an 18” kettle...”
It will clean up just fine!

Timothy F. Lewis said:

More appropriately “Butts IN an 18” kettle...”
It will clean up just fine!

Click to expand...

Yeah, so far I just dumped the butts and scraped it down with a 1" putty knife. The bottom vents are there, but kind of stuck in place due to rusted hardware. The tabs are a bit mangled, but I think I'll be able to salvage the dampers themselves and just replace the hardware. While I didn't pay anything for the grill itself, I'd prefer not to spend too much (other than elbow grease) to fix this guy up. Also, I'm still getting the evil eye from SWMBO over bringing home another wayward grill, so if packages of parts start arriving, I won't hear the end of it.

I know that “Look” So, the rotisserie I snagged from Craigslist is being delivered by a friend rather than mail, I couldnt figure out a way for me to make a two hour drive each way and a friend works ten minutes from the seller so, he’ll bring it back for me! Winner!
By replacing hardware do you mean the center pivots? That’s a pretty cheap hardware store stop.
Get it cleaned until and cook her something, she will get over it.

Love to see it when it’s cleaned up.