Well boys and gurls, how are all ya doing today? We have 65 degrees, a
lite rain, the new homemade WSM is puffing away on the front porch doing
chicken wings. (if you missed it, links to pics of it are listed in
recent posting)

I have coals on standard charcoal grid along with a homemade retainer
steel ring to go around the grid, minus any opening in the sides of the
ring. I also laid in a brick from one side to the center which creates a
channel that the coals can run along and burn like a fuse. With foil
covered oak laid on top of coals.

I did spare ribs the day before using kingsford and the bottom vents
were cracked open perhaps by 1/8" and the top vents (where I poked in
the temp probe) was open half way, well sir the temp was real hot, shot
up over 300 degrees, finally completely closed all vents! and temp
gradually (within 2 hours went down to reasonable)>

Now today, I am running with a batch of home made oak lump, bottom vents
are set cracked open by 1/8 inch and the same for the top vents, only
been cooking an hour but the temp seems to be holding 240ish which I
love. I'll keep an eye on it and see how well she holds the temp.
--
Regards, Mike Willsey (Piedmont)

Please visit my MSN Group: "The Practical Bar B Q'r", A great barbecue
resource; Filled with links and down-loadable documents on building or
buying a cooker, recipes, and links to other great bbq sites. Free
membership to all!

http://groups.msn.com/ThePracticalBa...ewwelcome.msnw

The operation performed quite nice with the lump I'm happy to say. At
first I only loaded about half as much as I loaded the briquettes. This
was due to the way the briquettes burned hot. Anyway, the first batch of
lump burned for about 1.5 hours, with one adjustment. Which was to
completely close the bottom vents and close the top vents with only
enough space for the probe to stick through.

The second batch of lump held very stable temp of 260 degrees which with
about half the load remaining gave me another 1.5 hours of cooking time.
This time the vent were kept about 1/16 of an inch the entire time It
seem to be pulling air in around where the barrel sits on the lower
kettle section and vents out smoke around the barrel and the lid
section. Which is fine for now for I was pleased with the temp and
adjustment capabilities!

I was pleased with the temp control which was very fast with the lump vs
the briquettes and the wings are delicious!
--
Regards, Mike Willsey (Piedmont)

Please visit my MSN Group: "The Practical Bar B Q'r", A great barbecue
resource; Filled with links and down-loadable documents on building or
buying a cooker, recipes, and links to other great bbq sites. Free
membership to all!

http://groups.msn.com/ThePracticalBa...ewwelcome.msnw