wilburpan

Nothing to be ashamed about with that frame, CK. It’s tough to get miters as tight as you did. And you want a frame to look nice, but not detract from the thing you’re framing. Great job!

I would hope that you can figure out my name from my username. I’m glad that I use my real name as a handle for forums. One time I was at a woodworking meeting, and a guy came up to me and introduced himself by saying, “I’m John*. I’m SawdustRulez* on the forums!†and all I could think was, “Dude, you’re in your 60’s.†*Not real name or username.

Oh, man! That’s amazing for your first time cooking a brisket!

That shrimp boil looks amazing. The only way that could be better is if you had some crawfish to throw in there as well.

I am so impressed. What temperature did you smoke the bacon at?

That is really a lovely space you have there.

Great looking ribs! That gives me something to shoot for next time I make some ribs.

Geez, Ken, you’re embarrassing me. Here’s my blog that’s primarily about Japanese woodworking tools: http://giantcypress.net . And here’s a picture of probably the best thing I’ve built so far. It’s a variation on an 18th century Bible box, which was a common household item in the 1700’s for people who lived in the Pennsylvania area. It’s made out of walnut, with an applied walnut burl veneer on the front.

Before you get going on this project, I have one word of advice: prototype. Get some cheap 2x2’s and nail them together to figure out your design, layout, and dimensions. Do it two or three or four times if you have to. That saves you a lot of time and grief in the long run.

Ha ha! You have no idea how many boards died over the years while I was trying to learn that lesson.

Well, storage unit may be overstating things a bit. It’s basically an open shelving unit. But it’s nice to have a place for the various accessories for Smaug. The first step in this project was the most important: making a list of what I needed to store and diagramming how I was going to do it. I went through three different designs before I finally settled on the final one. In addition, I wanted the storage unit to fit in a particular corner on my back porch, so there were dimensional concerns as well. I started the actual build with some 2x8’s and some 1x4 pine boards. I cut the 2x8’s in half long ways, and milled them down to make the frames for the bases of the two shelves. By the way, if you’re ever looking to make a project out of 2x4’s, and if you have the time and the means to do so, I would suggest buying 2x8’s and cutting them in half lengthwise instead. The wood you’ll find in a 2x8 is much better than in a 2x4. I could have butted and screwed the boards together, but I decided to use half lap joints at the corners, for added strength. After assembling the frame, I screwed pieces of 1x4 to the top to make one of the two shelves. I repeated this process to make a second shelf. Next, I went back to the 2x material, and cut out pieces for the four corners. I installed them onto the bottom shelf. And then placed the top shelf on the notches cut into the support pieces. Between the half lap joints and the screws, this will be extremely strong. I attached a 1x4 pine board across the back of the unit, and used more 1x pine boards to make the vertical dividers. The notch in the short piece attaches to the board across the back of the unit, and I sized the pieces so that the longer piece makes a 60º angle with the bottom shelf. I glued the two pieces together, hooked the notch underneath the back board, and screwed it into place. Another screw locked the front of the divider in place. I also screwed some scrap pieces of 1x pine in line with the dividers, so whatever I store there won’t slide out from underneath. And here it is all loaded up. The only thing that isn’t in this unit is the main grate, which is sitting inside Smaug right now. On the bottom shelf from left to right are the searing grate, the baking stone, the drip pan, the heat deflector stone, an empty slot for the main grate, , the upper grate, and parts for the basket splitter. I think it turned out pretty well. This is surprisingly strong while still being lightweight. Given how much room there is under the top shelf, I think I could have made it a little shorter. Luckily, the design of this storage unit will make it easy to take off the top shelf and cut down the vertical supports if I want to.

Nice cook and technique! Thanks for sharing it.

One other thing to note in the design of the KK firebox is that because of how it’s set up, any air coming into the lower vent only has one way to go: through the charcoal fire. In other kamados, the air could go through the charcoal, but it could also go around the firebox, which means that it’s not heated to the same degree (no pun intended ). That’s going to lead to a lower temperature inside the grill, and another reason why you see increased efficiency and the ability to hold a temperature with very little airflow through a KK grill.

If that’s the case, you’ll have to show us the grills you got from your frat brothers after they were done with the cattle prodding.

Try this, just for fun. Go to the search box at the top of this forum, and do a search for “fireboxâ€. You’ll get nine pages of results, going back to 2006. That’s nine years without a single mention of a firebox crack in a KK grill that I can find.

That’s exactly what I would do. For high heat cooks, I have the bottom dial fully open, which is the same amount of area as the left dial on the dual dial vent fully open. And I can consistently get the dome thermometer up to 600ºF in 15 minutes or less from lighting the fire. I think you’re going to be surprised as to how little air flow is needed to maintain a low and slow cook in a KK grill. I haven’t used a conventional kamado, but judging from John Setzler’s KJ videos, the vent settings on his low and slow cooks are letting significantly more air through a KJ grill than what I have going on with Smaug at the same temperature. More air going through the grill means more moisture being lost out the top vent, which is where I think KK grills have a big performance advantage over the conventional kamado brands. After all, the reason to use a kamado instead of a gas grill is the moisture issue, according to these guys. So it stands to reason that the more efficient you can make your kamado in retaining the moisture and heat, the better your results will be.

As I mentioned before, for low and slow cooks I tend to throttle down the bottom vent as much as possible. Here’s a picture of the lower vent during a low and slow. I was really taking this picture to show the liquid running out the bottom because that’s how well a KK grill traps moisture during a cook, so it’s not the best angle to show how I have the vent set. But you should be able to appreciate that the vent is barely cracked open. If I had the dual dial vent controls, this is how I would figure out what to do for low and slows. Start the charcoal fire, and make sure it’s established. Then I’d set the dual dials so that the left side was shut completely, and the right side was on the smallest hole, and crack the top vent barely open. By adjusting the top vent, I would figure out where I needed to put it for 200ºF, 225ºF, 250ºF, and so on. File that information away for future reference. I’ve had little problem controlling temps with the single vent, but the dual dial vent controls offer the benefit of repeatability when it comes to restricted air flow at the bottom. The way I have my vent set for low and slow cooks, I try to set it cracked slightly open in a consistent manner, but small variations could easily allow twice the amount of air through. The holes on the right side of the dual dial vent controls allow setting the lower vent for low air flow in a very repeatable manner.

That is impressive! Great job!

Could be worse. Bosco’s container could be the bottom one in the middle. That way it will be the very last container to get off the boat. That should add at least an extra day of transit time.

I have to say, the first thing I thought of when I saw the title of this thread was, “I thought they had two grills? Why are they just using one? I hope something didn’t happen.â€

The injector works okay. I usually insert the needle near the base of the neck and slide it towards the tail end, and then inflate. I can consistently separate the skin on both sides of the breast and both sides of the back. It’s not as good as using a compressor (see here: https://youtu.be/xp-kzew2Ewg?t=47s), but that’s the part of the duck where you get the most skin. I just read an article this morning about just inserting a large spoon under the skin to manually separate if from the meat. I may give that a try as well.

That’s a great looking chicken. I’ve said this before, but you’re going to have a great time using the rotisserie. Just to clarify, is your motor running clockwise or counterclockwise if you look at the side of the motor that the shaft inserts into?

I plan about 45 minutes to an hour cooking time for my duck cooks. The ducks I get are about 3 pounds. Coincidentally, we usually cook duck for Thanksgiving. It’s usually just the four of us, and the smallest turkey is still way too much food for our family. Besides, we like duck better, so we give more thanks for a duck than we would for a turkey.

I did another Peking duck. I pretty much used the same technique I’ve posted before for this cook. On the rotisserie. I cooked the duck at 325ºF for this cook, and I ramped the temp up to 400ºF when the IT got to 160ºF at the thigh. Final product. Cooked to an final IT of 170ºF in the thigh. Plated. I took advantage of chef’s prerogative, and snagged a drumstick. It was great. The dark meat was cooked well, and the breast meat was still nice and moist. I think the skin turned out the best out of the ducks I’ve made so far. The one thing I did differently this time was that I used a full basket of charcoal for this cook, as opposed to using the basket splitter to create an indirect zone. I’m not sure if using the full basket made the difference, or that I’m just getting more experience with this cook. One thing I had wanted to try with this cook was to use my bike pump to inflate the skin. I couldn’t figure out how to attach the needle that I use for this to my bike pump. So I used my marinade injector instead.

Well said! I’m probably a bit of an outlier because I decided on getting a KK grill as my first kamado grill, as opposed to starting with a cheaper brand and upgrading. Some folks might say I was a bit nuts for doing so. Still, I haven’t regretted that decision at all, and I’m very happy that I jumped in the deep end. And in the long run, I saved money because I didn’t purchase 1 or 2 other grills on the way to getting Smaug.