Handles and turnbuckles


 
M

MartinB

TVWBB All-Star
So this was something I had on my mind for a while, adding handles to the bottom section to make it easy to carry and dump the ash. Instead of carrying it by the legs etc.

So I finally got around to putting some handles there. I clean the creosote about a week ago and I've been doing some odds and ends to it since like putting on gasket etc.

I screwed up and put them too high where the nuts would interfere with the inside lip from the midsection. So I had to grind the nuts to about half of their original thickness, but then it clears it.

I've got clamps that I never installed. I really did not want to drill all the holes required for three clamps or so. That would be 18 more holes.or such

Anyhow, got the bright idea to use some turnbuckles I had laying around from a project I never used, and add some little links and use this to hold it together while rolling or transporting. Works like a charm. Only takes the lightest finger pressure to snug it up enough. I can roll it across my rough deck with and it won't come apart now. I can pick it up all in one piece by the top handles as well and move it. .

I previously toyed with the idea of bungees from the handles on the midsection to the legs and that did not seem to work there was too much give with bungees.
 

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I'm not familiar with this grill. It seems that Weber ought to provide handles and clamps as standard equipment. The advantages of the turnbuckles are that they quick, easy, effective, and completely reversible. I imagine that a nice set of clamps would beat the turnbuckles. However, the turnbuckles would beat a wimpy set of clamps.
 
Scott Smith said:
I'm not familiar with this grill. It seems that Weber ought to provide handles and clamps as standard equipment. The advantages of the turnbuckles are that they quick, easy, effective, and completely reversible. I imagine that a nice set of clamps would beat the turnbuckles. However, the turnbuckles would beat a wimpy set of clamps.
Click to expand...
There's a lot of things Weber doesn't provide and I would wager they're mostly in the name of safety. You don't want people trying to roll a hot lit grill, or provide them handles for taking a hot shell off such as we might if we need to recharge coals in the middle of a cook. Or even a lid on a hinge.... Because when the wind blows it will tip the whole thing over..... And could burn down somebody's house. Discovered this when my wife left the hingeed lid up on the 22-in kettle.. after cooking some steaks when I was out of town.... Found it tipped over on our wooden deck fortunately it had already gone out.😮.

I have clamps, just never installed them. To put three clamps on the cylinder would require 18 more holes.

With the lightest finger pressure this is rock solid. Completely removable.

One drawback to the clamps..... Is it is highly unlikely anybody would ever have them spaced out perfectly so that you can put your cylinder and bottom together in any position but one. They would need to be spaced perfectly equally around the perimeter , Even then the adjustments for each will be independent and still may need adjustment to work in any position but the one they were adjusted in. After purchasing my clamps I thought about installing them and agonized over this..... Had to stretch a tape around the perimeter of the vessel and market exactly equal distances to determine where to try to put the clamps, and most likely they were going to come out to be off slightly anyway.

. Even if you're okay with only one position it's still a very narrow range of error to put it together just to clamp it. You've got maybe an eighth inch of wiggle room on clamps. So you're going to have to monkey with it to get it lined up before you can clamp it. This seemed like a PITA to me too .

Here just essentially attaching it from handle to handle there's a lot more wiggle room when you put it together it doesn't have to be perfect. You only need to clamp it when moving it anyway. Which I do every time I use it, I put it back on my patio. I've been having to do that in pieces, because it was infuriating to try and roll it over the wooden deck it would tilt and separate.
 
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Actually it's worse than that I'd say these clamps that I bought probably have to be lined up to within 1/32nd of an inch...... Definitely less than 1/16". Of course you could modify this. Or clamping it over only one prong on the catch would give you quite a bit of room
 

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MartinB said:
One drawback to the clamps..... Is it is highly unlikely anybody would ever have them spaced out perfectly so that you can put your cylinder and bottom together in any position but one. They would need to be spaced perfectly equally around the perimeter , Even then the adjustments for each will be independent and still may need adjustment to work in any position but the one they were adjusted in. After purchasing my clamps I thought about installing them and agonized over this..... Had to stretch a tape around the perimeter of the vessel and market exactly equal distances to determine where to try to put the clamps, and most likely they were going to come out to be off slightly anyway.

Even if you're okay with only one position it's still a very narrow range of error to put it together just to clamp it. You've got maybe an eighth inch of wiggle room on clamps. So you're going to have to monkey with it to get it lined up before you can clamp it. This seemed like a PITA to me too .
Click to expand...
A possible solution to installing the clamps at 12, 4, and 8 o'clock exactly would be to install them at 12, 5, and 7 o'clock.
 
In any case I'm doing a burn-in of the smoker again with some chicken pork and bacon that was either older than we wanted to eat or got freezer burnt cuz wife just put it in Ziploc bags thinking we were going to eat it soon and and never did. And the gaskets I added work well. Kind of wish I had done this a long time ago with the gaskets.

That said, the gaskets were supposed to be self-adhesive and there was no such self-adhesive or backing whatsoever. Do I mind, no I just use some high temp silicone to glue them on but I'm still a little miffed that they would sell something that they clearly mislabel like that. These were the lava lock gasket supposedly..... Other people on Amazon complained that they didn't stick, the adhesive came off the gasket when they tried to peel the backing paper etc. I have some sneaky suspicion the vendor might have juat opened up these packages and stripped all the failing adhesive/backing off and resealed the package, and sell it without the adhesive that the package and ads say they have. Good thing I had the lavalock high temp silicone already.......... Although it doesn't seem to be that great of a silicone either......... I guess if The gaskets fall off cuz the silicone is crap then I might feel differently
 
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MartinB said:
So this was something I had on my mind for a while, adding handles to the bottom section to make it easy to carry and dump the ash. Instead of carrying it by the legs etc.

So I finally got around to putting some handles there. I clean the creosote about a week ago and I've been doing some odds and ends to it since like putting on gasket etc.

I screwed up and put them too high where the nuts would interfere with the inside lip from the midsection. So I had to grind the nuts to about half of their original thickness, but then it clears it.

I've got clamps that I never installed. I really did not want to drill all the holes required for three clamps or so. That would be 18 more holes.or such

Anyhow, got the bright idea to use some turnbuckles I had laying around from a project I never used, and add some little links and use this to hold it together while rolling or transporting. Works like a charm. Only takes the lightest finger pressure to snug it up enough. I can roll it across my rough deck with and it won't come apart now. I can pick it up all in one piece by the top handles as well and move it. .

I previously toyed with the idea of bungees from the handles on the midsection to the legs and that did not seem to work there was too much give with bungees.
Click to expand...
You must run a iq 110
 
MartinB said:
There's a lot of things Weber doesn't provide and I would wager they're mostly in the name of safety. You don't want people trying to roll a hot lit grill, or provide them handles for taking a hot shell off such as we might if we need to recharge coals in the middle of a cook. Or even a lid on a hinge.... Because when the wind blows it will tip the whole thing over..... And could burn down somebody's house. Discovered this when my wife left the hingeed lid up on the 22-in kettle.. after cooking some steaks when I was out of town.... Found it tipped over on our wooden deck fortunately it had already gone out.😮.

I have clamps, just never installed them. To put three clamps on the cylinder would require 18 more holes.

With the lightest finger pressure this is rock solid. Completely removable.

One drawback to the clamps..... Is it is highly unlikely anybody would ever have them spaced out perfectly so that you can put your cylinder and bottom together in any position but one. They would need to be spaced perfectly equally around the perimeter , Even then the adjustments for each will be independent and still may need adjustment to work in any position but the one they were adjusted in. After purchasing my clamps I thought about installing them and agonized over this..... Had to stretch a tape around the perimeter of the vessel and market exactly equal distances to determine where to try to put the clamps, and most likely they were going to come out to be off slightly anyway.

. Even if you're okay with only one position it's still a very narrow range of error to put it together just to clamp it. You've got maybe an eighth inch of wiggle room on clamps. So you're going to have to monkey with it to get it lined up before you can clamp it. This seemed like a PITA to me too .

Here just essentially attaching it from handle to handle there's a lot more wiggle room when you put it together it doesn't have to be perfect. You only need to clamp it when moving it anyway. Which I do every time I use it, I put it back on my patio. I've been having to do that in pieces, because it was infuriating to try and roll it over the wooden deck it would tilt and separate.
Click to expand...
 

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🤣 I went to the scrap yard where they have all the washers that’s why I found these braces clamps they were longer brought them home cutting down the size I just had to drill a hole in the center of it went to the hardware and bought some longer stainless steel quarter inch I believe one and a half inch is coming out i got the knobs at the warehouse too I think I spent a total of maybe eight dollars and it gives it a much cleaner look
 
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