Fire maintenance and design

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Ox190
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Fire maintenance and design

Postby Ox190 » Fri Mar 16, 2018 9:05 am

So I have a new to me vertical offset. Cook chamber is 42*24*24 and firebox is 24*24*24 made of 1/4" plate. This is my first stick burner. I'm sure it's just going to come down to trial and error but I was just curious as to what y'all have found to be the most efficient ways to build and maintain a fire.
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Custom vertical offset.
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Re: Fire maintenance and design

Postby Canadian Smoker » Fri Mar 16, 2018 11:18 am

I am sure everyone has their own fire building methods....I know after trial and error what my cooker likes and where it runs best.
I like to start buy heating up my cooker and building a bed of coals for a base....I like to let it run for 45 minutes to an hour just to get all the metal warmed up.
I pre heat my splitz on the fire box so they combust real quick...I may leave the lid open on the firebox for a minute to achieve combustion.
I try and keep a small hot clean fire and look for the thin blue smoke....works awesome for my cooker....YMMV.
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Re: Fire maintenance and design

Postby txsmkmstr » Fri Mar 16, 2018 11:22 am

Hmmmm.... So many options available to you.

My "most efficient" way is to use the gas log lighter to get things going. If you don't have one built into the firebox then a weedburner will do the same thing from the outside. Lacking that, I'd suggest a half-to-full chimney of charcoal briquettes fired up and glowing - toss in the firebox and put wood on top. You can always kick it old school and just use small tinder, kindling and wood splits.

Hope this helps in some small way. :thap:
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Ox190
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Re: Fire maintenance and design

Postby Ox190 » Fri Mar 16, 2018 11:37 am

I have the weed burner to get things going, love that thing, I'm using lump charcoal to get a bed of coals going, I think I may need to experiment with the size of the splits I'm throwing on there to get the perfect amount of burn time and smoke.
Custom vertical offset.
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Re: Fire maintenance and design

Postby bsooner75 » Fri Mar 16, 2018 12:00 pm

You nailed it with trial and error. Let the cooker dictate what it needs to run not a preconceived notion of what you think it needs.

That being said, start small and build up. It’s easier to gain heat than try and get a roaring fire to calm down. I would stick with the lump base. Are you buying wood or cutting your own? I’d put one (medium size) stick on either side of the coal bed and one across the top (like an H) to start and go from there.


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Re: Fire maintenance and design

Postby Ox190 » Fri Mar 16, 2018 12:06 pm

I went in with a couple of buddies on a cord of seasoned Hickory from Arnold Brothers, the logs are 20-24" considering cutting them in half and starting there to see how she runs, tried full logs last weekend and I wasn't totally happy with the result, fire was up and down pretty much the entire smoke. I tried only adjusting one thing at a time to figure out what would fix it, I feel like I'm on the right path, it's just going to take more practice.
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Re: Fire maintenance and design

Postby bsooner75 » Fri Mar 16, 2018 12:24 pm

I used oak from Arnold Bros in my old stick burner. It was good wood, they supply a lot of BBQ restaurants in the area. But the sticks were too big for my little fire box. Definitely try splitting them and see how that goes.

Russ posted something a while back invented by one of his fellow Kiwi’s. Northern sells them. If in still used an offset I’d definitely have one. https://www.google.com/shopping/product ... gKL1_D_BwE


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Re: Fire maintenance and design

Postby txsmkmstr » Fri Mar 16, 2018 3:54 pm

bsooner75 wrote:I used oak from Arnold Bros in my old stick burner. It was good wood, they supply a lot of BBQ restaurants in the area. But the sticks were too big for my little fire box. Definitely try splitting them and see how that goes.

Russ posted something a while back invented by one of his fellow Kiwi’s. Northern sells them. If in still used an offset I’d definitely have one. https://www.google.com/shopping/product ... gKL1_D_BwE


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Plus 1 on cutting in half lengthwise and splitting smaller. Once up to temp a quality built offset doesn't need a big fire to maintain temps. I'd rather toss a piece of woof on more often than try to choke down the airflow with dampers. Usually, I run everything wide open and feed the fire as needed.

Plus eleventy-bazillion on the Kindling Cracker. The new XL size works FANTASTIC for splitting smoking wood. I picked one up last weekend at Northern. I was on the mailing list so they found a coupon for 20 bucks off a hundred dollar purchase.... then gave me an internet special price on top of that (or below that). Bottom line, the XL version was 108 bucks and change out the door.
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