Building shelter for my WSM


 
Sorry for the bad pic but anyone know what dimensions I should use to build this? What type of wood should I use and would I need to treat it (I live in Michigan so it would be outside year round.)

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Or should I go with something that the entire smoker in enclosed? (like an outhouse style)

smokeshack1.jpg
 
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I went with a 60" width, 30" depth and 23" height for my cart. I have the 22.5" WSM; for the 18.5" you cart may not need to be that big.

As for wood, I went with cedar and used a weatherproofing stain. The plan is for it to be covered when not in use, but during the summer I do want to have it out to stunt a little.
 
Anthony N said:
I went with a 60" width, 30" depth and 23" height for my cart. I have the 22.5" WSM; for the 18.5" you cart may not need to be that big.

As for wood, I went with cedar and used a weatherproofing stain. The plan is for it to be covered when not in use, but during the summer I do want to have it out to stunt a little.
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Do you have any pics of it? That's my concern is I have no where to store it (without kicking a car out of the garage) and I wanted to still be able to use it in those winter months if possible.
 
I have been pondering and planning and thinking about building a WSM cart for a while.
I guess I have moved from pondering to fixin' to since I bought a pretty good stack of assorted red cedar on Sunday.
Probably not going to be anything special, but it should give me a place to hang the lid, a work surface, and a compartment to store the chimney and a few accessories.
I have been studying some joinery that I have not used before, outdoor projects are usually what I like to practice on if I have the opportunity since they don't have to be quite as tight as indoor furniture.
Since I am in the fixin' to stage there is no predicted timeline.
I was thinking I would piggyback the build on this thread if there are no objections.
Of course it's no big deal to start a new thread either.
 
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A question for you guys that have built your carts with the WSM sticking up through a hole in the top...... How do you clean out the ash and load the charcoal?
 
Charles H. said:
A question for you guys that have built your carts with the WSM sticking up through a hole in the top...... How do you clean out the ash and load the charcoal?
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If I build the cart I will have a hinged top or at least the ability to still open the cart and take the WSM out.
 
It is hot and I am not in good shape so even though this is not a real complex or precision project it may take me a while.
Someday it will be finished so if it does not get too boring check in once in a while.

temperature by chashint1, on Flickr

For projects like this I start out with an idea of what I want to do and sorta engineer it along the way.
The cart will have a solid bottom base, a storage cabinet, a work surface, and castors.
I am using rough cut red cedar fencing material for the project.
I spent a little over $100 at Home Depot for the wood I think I will need.
The plan includes experimenting with mortise and tenon joints.
I may bail on that as soon as the first experiment fails.

I intended for the base platform to be 4 2x6's glued together.
After sitting the WSM base and lid on the wood, it just didn't look big enough so I added a 2x4.
That will make the base about 26" wide when it is glued together.
The long boards will be about 48" long and with breadboards on both ends.
That will end up with the base being about 53" long.

Sizing it up 1 by chashint1, on Flickr

Sizing it up 2 by chashint1, on Flickr

After setting on the base layout I cut two 8' 2x6's and one 8' 2x4 to length.

Wood base 1 by chashint1, on Flickr

I was only able to get one breadboard out of the 2x4 that was cut in half so I had to lop off part of another one. That was not part of the original plan when I bought the wood.

wood base with breadboard by chashint1, on Flickr

Once the wood was sorta cut to length I ran it through the planer to get it all the same thickness and clen up the surface.
I will use the tablesaw to square up the long edges.

wood base after thickness planer by chashint1, on Flickr

I have not decided whether to simply edge glue the long boards with waterproof glue or to peg them together.
Since it is hot and I have to work in short spurts I am leaning towards just edge gluing them.

I debated on posting this since so little has been done, what do y'all think??
Post in little increments or wait until it starts looking like something ??
 
Post in little increments. I took the step by step posts from another poster to get the idea of how to build mine.
 
I finally spent some more time working on the WSM cart.
A good portion of the time was spent aligning my miter saw and my tablesaw which were not cutting square.
A long time ago I bought a stacked dado kit but never really had a project that I thought I could use it on.
Since this project is being used as a technique learning opportunity I tried using the dado kit last weekend.
Since this was a fairly expensive stacked dado I expected it to cut clean, square, and flat bottomed.
After fiddling with it for several hours and reading up on stacked dados on several woodworking sites getting cuts that are less than clean, square, and flat is more the norm than not...I have decided my stacked dado kit worthless.
So on to plan B.
It would have probably been better if I had made a tall fence but I didn't have suitable stock on hand and I didn't want to spend any more money so I made do.
This is how I cut the tenons for the breadboard, they are 1/2" thick and 1.5" long.



image 1 by
chashint1, on Flickr



image 2 by
chashint1, on Flickr


image 3 by
chashint1, on Flickr


After the end cuts were made I just cut off the waste by lowering the blade so it cut up into the slot.



image 4 by
chashint1, on Flickr



image 5 by
chashint1, on Flickr
 
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Since I was not satisified with the quality of the stacked dado I will use a router to cut the mortise in the end board.
There is a point of curiosity for me, all of the tenons on the 2x6's are just a thinner than .5" which is fine.



image 6 by
chashint1, on Flickr


Not sure how or why the tenon on the 2x4 came out >.5" since all the boards went through the thickness planer together and the same fence setting on the table saw was used to make all the cuts.
Both ends of the 2x4 came out >.5"....very odd to me.
I will sand it to fit once the glue up is complete.




image 7 by
chashint1, on Flickr


Here is a picture of the boards laid out on the table saw.
I don't know if the picture shows it well but they don't sit flush with each other.
I will probably have to try to true the edges up by running them through the table saw again.




image 8 by
chashint1, on Flickr


This cart is wider than I really want it to be so for a sanity check I sat the WSM on the boads again to see if I can get rid of the 2x4 in the middle.
As you can see it really needs the 2x4.




image 9 by
chashint1, on Flickr



image 10 by
chashint1, on Flickr
- - - Updated - - -


I knew I was going to have to rip the boards again to get clean edges so I just went ahead and did it.
I picked the flattest/straightest edge of each board and ripped a sliver off the other edge. They all lie next to each other much better now.
Unsure if the edge alignment really shows up in the picture or not but there are hardly any gaps now.
A couple of the boards are kinda twisted though and they are not very flexible.
It does not really matter since this is just a BBQ cart, but i still want it to fit together nicely or I would have just screwed it together using cross beams and it would probably be finished by now.




image 11 by
chashint1, on Flickr


I ended up splurging on a new tool, I have never used a biscuit joiner before so I got one.
Home Depot only had the Ryobi so that is waht I got.
I don't know if I need a biscuit joiner but it is easy to use and the biscuits seem to help with aligning the boards.




image 12 by
chashint1, on Flickr


I don't know if I will work on it anymore this weekend or not, wifey may need some attention.
Thanks for looking and my apologies for moving so slow on this.
 
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I got the bottom panel glued up today.
I did two small glue ups and then joined the smaller panels to form the base of the cart.

Partial glue up 1 by chashint1, on Flickr

Partial glue up 2 by chashint1, on Flickr

Full glue up 1 by chashint1, on Flickr


The small piece of plywood on the tenon is for fit check.
I cut a dado with a 1/2" router bit.

Full glue up 2 by chashint1, on Flickr

Full glue up 3 by chashint1, on Flickr

I was hoping the biscuits would help keep the boards aligned and reduce the amount of sanding I have to do.
They really didn't do that to much so I have a date with the belt sander next weekend.
The base panel is heavy and the edge joints fit very tight to each other so once the glue is fully cured the panel will not need any cross beams for structural support.
The cart is still going to have a storage cabinet with a door that will support a work surface.
Right now the work surface is going to be another glued up cedar panel.
It would be helpful to me if the work surface was used to handle the food and not end up just being a place to sit the lid and I am still pondering how to make an easy to use lid hanger.
 
I had a couple of hours to work in the garage yesterday so I installed the breadboard ends onto the cart base.
Since my dado blade for the table saw really didn't work the way I expected I went back to the router to cut the mortise.
I didn't have a router bit long enough so I bought this 1/2" shank, 1/2"x2 1/2" router bit for $35.

$35 router bit by chashint1, on Flickr

I try not to include tools when I look at a project's price but it is hard not to, between the biscuit joiner and this router bit that is $150 on top of the $130 of cedar.
Haha, I want a random orbital sander too but I will probably just use my old belt sander and call it good enough.

Even though I was careful and used the same saw setups to cut the tenon on each board there was some alignment issues when I did the panel glue up.
I had to true the visible edge where the breadboard and the long boards joined.
I used a straight edge clamp and my circular saw for this.
I took several passes creeping to the correct depth of cut. It worked good. Then I had to do the other side to match, LOL, well I got it done good enough for an outdoor project.
I did bot want the mortise & tenon joint to show so I cut off about 1" from each side of the tenon.
On paper this looks simple enough, but getting the cut sanded square and flush to the end of the board was challenging, by the time I did the 4th one it was pretty good.
Installing a breadboard is definitely something I have to practice up on some more before I attempt to build the trestle dining table.
What I thought would be an hours worth of work had now turned into 3 and I was frustrated with my quality so I decided to go against every woodworking law ever written and glued the breadboard on instead of attaching it with pegs.
It took a lot of glue to coat all the surfaces.
I don't have clamps long enough to span the length of the base so I rigged it.

Clamp rig 1 by chashint1, on Flickr

Clamp rig 2 by chashint1, on Flickr


Sorry there is not more to show, I will keep posting the progress as it happens though.
 
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Charles H. said:
It would be helpful to me if the work surface was used to handle the food and not end up just being a place to sit the lid and I am still pondering how to make an easy to use lid hanger.
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What about a coat hook on a pole or a sign pole?

885785330722.jpg
or


614FaEbm4eL._SL1500_.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B002YZUL58/tvwb-20
but adapted to your particular needs.

Both would be easily attached to either a roof support column or something similar.
 
For the Slide-Aside hanger do y'all think that could work with a WSM 22" lid?
The kettle lids are much more shallow.


I had not thought about the sign hanger or something like the coat hook, I like both of them.
 
Well, I played in the garage Saturday and even managed to do a little bit on the cart base.
When I started this project I mentioned that it is as much a learning vehicle as it is just building a WSM cart.
To that end working with rough cut lumber is a very different animal than working with high quality sheet materials and furniture grade wood.
I knew this would be the case before I started and I thought I knew enough about woodworking to deal with it.
Knowing stuff in my head and accurately executing it has proven to be challenging.
Not that this project requires it, but I really was intending to build this flat and square. I was able to fix the edges so they are parallel to each other but I was not able to compensate for the slight bows and twist in a couple of the boards. The result is the base is bowed a little bit resulting in rocking when placed on a flat surface.
This will not affect this project (other than annoy me forever HAHA) but it has certainly shown me I am not equipped or know enough to build a massive trestle dining table with a glued up panel for the top.

I already knew this too but it has been a while since I have built anything and yesterday was a reminder of just how much sanding is involved with a wood project.
When I came inside my wife and sister-in-law both burst out laughing I was covered head to toe with wood dust and my face had clean spots where the goggles and the respirator had been. I must admit I was a mess.
I hate sanding.

20150905_120655 by chashint1, on Flickr

20150905_120702 by chashint1, on Flickr

20150905_120641 by chashint1, on Flickr

20150905_120610 by chashint1, on Flickr

20150905_120626 by chashint1, on Flickr

20150905_120740 by chashint1, on Flickr

20150905_120729 by chashint1, on Flickr


I wanted this to be a fairly compact cart since patio space is at a premium so I decided to build the base with four 2x6 and one 2x4 (instead of five 2x6) to save 2" on the width.
My original idea to keep the WSM from possibly bouncing off the base was to use a forestner bit and cut 1" deep circles for the feet to sit in.
I thought the circles and the breadboard ends would be cool show off features.
Well, after all is said and done, I ended up not having enough room to the edges of the wood to cut the circles.
I did learn a lot about making breadboard end caps but in the end they will just be hidden by a 2x4 frame I am installing around the base perimeter.
Net result is the cart base is actually 1/2 wider than if I had just used five 2x6's and I lost the cosmetic design feature of the breadboard end caps.
On a positive note I don't have to figure out how to attach the frame posts for the cabinet to the cart base, the 2x4 perimeter will make a strong joint easy.
 
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