possible to create mini with limited tools?

[Jeff Davidson]

Hi,

I'm embarrassingly unprepared to embark on one of these builds. I have screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers, a hammer and a drill. Seems like I have to cut the bottom out of a pot? also, how do these cook vs a wsm?

tia,

 

[ChuckO]

I just drilled holes in the bottom of my mini, so if you have a drill, you're good to go (assuming you can find a pot that fits)

https://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?51217-New-Guy-last-weekend-s-project-Go-Giants

 

[MilesVDustin]

I used a harbor freight grinder with a cutoff disc to cut the bottom out. Other than that, drill, screwdriver, pliers.

 

[CaseT]

I would recommend cutting the bottom out, especially if you want to do some high temp smoking too.

Use whatever you have. The aluminum is really easy to cut. I use my jigsaw with a metal blade. Before that I used tin snips on one. With a large enough pilot hole you could take the blade from a hack saw, wrap duct tape for a handle on one end and use just the blade as a hand saw. You could do the same with a metal sawzall blade. Drill a bunch of holes along the perimeter of the cut out, not as pretty but the fire doesn't care!

 

[George Curtis]

Yea, you could just drill a lot of very close holes and then use snips or whatever to cut the remaining metal. But this is a good reason to up your tool collection. Get a grinder of some sort as they can be used for other things like making a coal basket.
but please use safety equipment such as a face shield, etc.