Smoke Shack


 
M

Matt Y

TVWBB Member
Hey Everybody,
for my birthday this year i decided to build the smoke shack that Greg Mackiejewski originally design and that is posted on Cold Temp section of the TVWB site. So here are some pics - today its 34 degrees F in Minneapolis and my bullet is holding steady at 254 F on a pork shoulder!

Heres the lumber arriving - this is a lot of lumber, but it includes some 2x4s for some home improvement projects
IMG_20130329_091417.jpg


This is the finished bottom section
IMG_20130414_100454.jpg


And i skipped ahead to the finished front door. I made a few mods to the front door as you can see. I cut a hole for a plexiglass window and added my own logo!
IMG_20130503_220351.jpg


And here she is, cooking a pork shoulder as we speak
IMG_20130504_060911.jpg


A few more mods that I made from Gregs design
1. I added some "stoppers" on to the back wall as lateral support. This will help prevent the door pulling the left and right walls out of square when it opens
2. I added some hangers for my digital temp probes
3. I moved the roof support beams out (to the left and right) by 1/2 inch because things weren't lining up

Temp probes
IMG_20130504_060952.jpg


Smokey picture of my lid hanger, I'll have to get a better picture of the lateral "stoppers"
IMG_20130504_061002.jpg
 
It's GREAT Matt!!
Are you relying on an air-flow coming in from the spacing in the floor?
Is it easy to move (empty)?
 
This so cool... Too bad I don't have a big yard to have a smoke shack like you nice going Matt.
 
Hey Guys,
@Jim - yep, there's about 1/2 inch between the floor boards and a gap between the roof and the walls. so far there's great airflow. As far as moving, its pretty easy - it comes apart into 6 pieces so its not to bad.

@Mike - i used tounge/groove notty pine which i treated with thompson's water seal. Mike's original design calls for cedar but that was nearly 3x the cost of pine, so i just went with pine.
 
@Jim - yep, stenciled in two parts. I did the lettering/house/chimney in one layer and then the smoke cloud 2nd. For the smoke cloud i sputtered the spray paint on there to give it a cloud effect.

I used a DIY trick i found on-line for people who stencil interior walls. I got some spray on adhesive by 3M - this stuff has the same tackyness as a post-it note. So I sprayed that on the door, placed my stencil on the door and got a good "seal" around the edges of the stencil.
 
Here are some additional photos

here's a close-up of the lateral "stoppers". These are screwed into the back wall
IMG_20130504_134652.jpg


here's a better shot of the lid hanger and back wall
IMG_20130504_134656.jpg


and here's a shot of the pork shoulder after the rest period. This was the Renowned Mr. Brown recipe
IMG_20130504_171150.jpg
 
That is sweet! Nice set up!! I have been thinking about making something similar! Nice nice nice!!
 
It has been said that imitation is the highest form of flattery ... and needless to say I'm flattered. To be honest, I never thought anyone would ever build another one.

It looks awesome Matt!

I love the stenciling and the window is a nice addition too.

I have a several questions:

1) What are you using for a latch to keep the door closed? I used rare earth magnets in the framing of the door.

2) What size WSM do you have? It's hard to tell from the pictures, but it looks like a 22". If so, how's the fit? I have an 18", but designed it to be able to fit the 22", but I wasn't sure how well it would fit.

3) I see you only have 7 floor boards on the base where my design had 8. Did you use a different width board or just make the spacing wider?

4) It's hard to tell from the pictures, but what did you use to "plate" the floor boards. I used flashing and wrapped the boards, but your material looks different.

5) You said that added lateral support. Not sure why. Could you elaborate? I've had no problems with keeping the structure "square".

6) Your roof does look a little different and you said you had some problems lining things up. I'll have to go back to my drawings and see if they're not very clear. Could you send me a close-up picture of your roof?
 
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Hey Greg,
here are the answers to your questions

1) I am using some standard magnet closures (2 of them) that I found in Home Depot's cabinet hardware isle

2) You are correct, i have a 22" and it fits great! I have a few inches of clearance on either side and front/back.

3 and 4) For the floor I used pressure treated 1x4s and wrapped them in roof flashing. I used 1x4s because that was the smallest size treated board my lumberyard had. So, even without the flashing 8 boards was going to be tight (i.e. not much space for airflow). So I abandoned one of them. Also adding to the width of the boards was the roof flashing, I was mostly successful in getting the roof flashing to be very tight to the board but the end width of the boards was probably +1/4.

5) When I put the structure together without the door everything stands very square. However i think the rotary latches connecting my side walls to the back wall may be a little loose or something, because when i hang the door and open the door all the way the weight of the door pulls the side walls out of square (in this case they get pulled to the left by the weight of the door). When i close the door the walls didn't totally move back into square so the door wasn't shutting properly. So i just added two little stoppers screwed into the back wall (they're in the post from 4-may-2013 at 10:54 pm, right below the rear-most rotary latches).

6) The only mod that i had to make to the roof was moving the left and right "joists" out by ~1/2 inch. Based on how i read the plans (which may not be correct!) the roof's joists were pulling the left/right walls in to far which resulted in the left/right walls not being flush with the back wall as they got closer to the roof. Here's a close up. I can get you measurements if you want.
IMG_20130511_153147.jpg


I also added some support to the back side of the door to keep it from racking. I noticed after a while that the "handle side" of the door began to sag
IMG_20130511_153535.jpg


Other future mod:
Adding a access panel for one of the vents on the back wall. When i used the smoke shack it almost worked too well, but my rear vent was "fixed" at 25%! My front 2 vents were normally 0-10% open and I was still hovering at 250-260 for my PB cook. So i need a way to control that back vent.

Thanks for your design Greg! Your plans were very well laid out and the 'collapsible' feature was the only way i could get the wife to go along with building a smoke shack!
 
Matt,

Thanks for the reply.

I didn't use pressure treated floor boards. I used pressure treated 4x4s and those would be the only boards that would make ground contact. I think getting the flashing on the floor boards was one of the hardest parts since flashing is not very bendable, so a made a brake using a piano hinge and some oak boards. It worked well.

I think my smoke shack doesn't go out of square because of my dowel "hangers". The dowels give lateral stability. I can see where the "stoppers in the back wall would do the same thing.

I'm going to spend some time tomorrow and look at your roof, my roof and the plans in more detail to see what may have happened there.

Your door probably sagged because you only used two screws per board in the framing. One on the top and one on the bottom. If you used four screws per board, two at the top and two at the bottom, that would not have happened.

I can understand the need for a rear access panel. In my case, I don't need it since I use a BBQ guru automatic temperature controller and only need access to one of the vents.

You're welcome. I'm glad to see someone else was able to reproduce my efforts and was able to customize it to fit their needs.

Have you used it in the rain yet?
 
Matt,

I looked at the roof in more detail today. The plans seem to match the "as built". Could you send me one dimension. I'm interested in your roof "joists". The 2x4s from the roof and left and right walls should match up when "the shack" is put together. You said you had to move the "joists" out ~1/2". Could you measure from the outside of the roof to the edge of the 2x4. That should be 4 1/4" according to the plans. Are you saying yours are 3 3/4"?

There is one other thing I noticed about your roof that could contribute to "the shack" going out of square. Your latches aren't opposing. That is, the latch plates should oppose. There should be two latch plates and two latches on each joist and they should be diagonal to each other. Explained in a different way, the front left and rear right roof joists should have latch plates and the rear right and front left roof joists should have latches. The following picture shows this:
 
Hey Greg,
During the cook from the pics above there was light rain in the morning - the thompson's water seal made the water bead right off!

I'll measure that dimension when i get home today.

I did notice that I put all the latches going one direction, why does the orientation matter?

thx
Matt
 
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