00:00:00:00 - 00:00:08:18 Speaker 1 Hey, guys, I'm Frank Cox. I'm the BBQ Pit Engineer, and this is the SmokerBuilder podcast. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy this episode.

00:00:08:18 - 00:00:18:04 Speaker 1 Greg Rose has got a good one here. Is bracing on cook chamber doors really necessary on a 250 gallon propane build?

00:00:18:06 - 00:00:38:02 Speaker 1 I know a lot of them. A lot of reputable builders like Moberg don't use them. That's a great question. And it's something we probably should cover here. By the way, if you don't know already, if you go to the menu, whether it's on the left hand side of your desktop or if it's on, if you're on your phone, it'll be up in the hamburger menu.

00:00:38:02 - 00:00:58:10 Speaker 1 It's like the three stacked patties is what I call it. Hamburger. There is a barbecue, barbecue pit engineering with Frank course, where I talk a lot about fabrication in there. But you can also go to I think it's like $4.99 a month after a 30 day free trial. Whatever. It's just to kind of keep this bill paid is all that's for.

00:00:58:12 - 00:01:18:17 Speaker 1 But anyway, if you go over to the YouTube channel, I do have a series of videos about this topic. But just to go ahead and answer Greg's question here. So the I don't brace anything if I don't have to. I'll just say it that way. A lot of times what happens the tank is what's moving.

00:01:18:19 - 00:01:41:13 Speaker 1 Like if you're working on a propane tank, you've got those heads that are welded onto the tank. Plus those guys are just trying. When they roll the vessel, they're just trying to make the two ends come as close together as possible. They're not worried about that vessel being slightly egg shaped or perfectly round or over rolled a little bit too tight, and then they open it up and make it neat.

00:01:41:15 - 00:02:00:19 Speaker 1 As a matter of fact, if you look at the seam weld on the tank where the where the edges come together, wherever it is, usually like it's 7:00 or some or 5:00 or something on the tank, you'll see that there's slats where that tank comes together usually, or it could even be dipped in a little bit where that seam weld is.

00:02:00:20 - 00:02:25:04 Speaker 1 It goes a long ways on the tank. That's a good indicator of what you're getting into when you look at that. But they force that tank it to fit the heads because the heads have like this wedge thing that's rolled on the inside of that, or they use a piece of strap and they cram that head, the little lip inside the vessel, the tank part, and that kind of brings it into submission.

00:02:25:04 - 00:02:41:12 Speaker 1 And then they use wedges and dogs and whatever else they got to do, depending on what the tank is. And then they use a process called submersible arc welding, which is sub arc is the way to search that. If you want to see what that looks like on the YouTube, look it up. I've seen it in person.

00:02:41:12 - 00:03:11:18 Speaker 1 It is awesome to watch. But anyway, that being said, it's depositing three fillers at one time. Underneath of a of a pile of flux core down inside that joint. And it's a one pass operation and it leaves a big bead on top. She's about a half inch wide on the bead or so. And what happens is that process is putting so much heat into that head and that tank that things move.

00:03:11:20 - 00:03:37:01 Speaker 1 And so basically what I'm saying, by saying all of that about how they build the tank, we don't know what it's going to do when we cut. We can't predict it. We can't plan for it. However, with with some guys like ourselves, I I'll come to that, admit it. Anyway, so what happens is that tank is, like moving all around and stuff is going crazy.

00:03:37:07 - 00:04:03:21 Speaker 1 And we can't predict it, so we try to outsmart it before we cut the doors with gussets. That's a 5050 chance that it's going to work. So whatever. I'm doing it, whenever I'm building a cooker, if you watch the most recent, thousand gallon build, footage that's from the summer, I think is when I published most of those videos, you'll see that what I do first is I get the firebox hole cut, and I get the firebox mounted.

00:04:03:23 - 00:04:22:22 Speaker 1 And what the strategic direction of that is, if I cut a hole, I want to I want to get I want to get something in there to hold its shape as it is before I start cutting everything else. And I'll tack it, stitch it, weld it on whatever doesn't matter. Then I'll go to the other head and I'll cut my collector box in.

00:04:22:22 - 00:04:43:15 Speaker 1 Or if you're going to use an elbow, do that. Whatever you're going to do on the other end, get that hole cut next and then get something welded to it. I put the collector box on. I usually stitch it in place or weld it out. And what that's going to do is now that I've got those two big nasty holes cut in those heads, now those things are they're going to relax.

00:04:43:15 - 00:05:07:07 Speaker 1 They're going to move stuff like that. Well, I've tacked something in there to prevent further movement, which will minimize how much the inside of my doors flex compared to the tank. Now, if you went through there and you cut your firebox, all your stack and then you cut all your doors out, that thing's going to just blowing on you and it's going to do whatever it wants because it lost all of its structure, if that makes sense.

00:05:07:09 - 00:05:29:01 Speaker 1 The reason I started doing that I should cover two is because I literally had I built a 500 gallon for Matt Gerlach and I wanted to have split overlap doors, which is like my bingo build. So in other words, when the doors where the doors are cut, there's nothing in between. Both doors will open, one door will open or the other.

00:05:29:01 - 00:05:51:11 Speaker 1 It just depends on how you build it. But there's no structure in the middle, like a split between those doors on his cooker. When we did that, that tank, not only did it twist, the whole tank twisted on us. It was crazy. And a lot it was not a little bit of it twisted on us and the middle, like was it was over rolled so the middle squeezed in.

00:05:51:13 - 00:06:12:18 Speaker 1 And so if you ever look at that cooker, if you see pictures of it, you'll see I built this sign that kind of resembled like a suspension bridge that was that was a structural element to keep that cooker at bay so that it would match the doors. The doors just did their thing. They didn't spring, but that tank moved all over the place.

00:06:12:20 - 00:06:36:13 Speaker 1 And so that's why we have to be careful when we start doing that. So my advice don't worry so much about bracing the doors before you cut them out. Do that as an after effect. Try to work through your build like get everything around the doors. The doors are the very last thing that you cut. And whenever you cut them, you might get a little bit of a spring.

00:06:36:15 - 00:07:04:04 Speaker 1 I've noticed after I started doing it this way, I usually wind up with about a 3/16 of an inch spring on one corner of the door. Typically it'll be on the corner closest to the head, and it'll spring like the tank will contract and it'll look like the door sprung open is what it will look like. And if you watch around on some of Danny's posts on here or mine from early on, I don't remember if I've ever even posted pictures of it, honestly.

00:07:04:06 - 00:07:21:13 Speaker 1 But we use a ten ton, porta power, which is the thing you can get from Harbor Freight for, I don't know, a couple hundred bucks hundred and 60, whatever it is, and it's a ten ton press that like when you crank the jack handle, it pushes out like this, or it'll pull depending on the attachment you have on it.

00:07:21:15 - 00:07:43:09 Speaker 1 And we just stretch that head the way we need it to go. And then we put something in there like our cooking rack brace or something, and that'll actually hold that tank at the same radius as the door. Alternatively, you can use the chain hoist from Harbor Freight. They're pretty cheap, usually around 100 bucks. You don't need a huge one.

00:07:43:11 - 00:07:59:16 Speaker 1 Just a one ton or a three quarter ton. It's like a ratcheting chain hoist is what it's called. And you can literally hook the door and you can pull it tighter that way. Or you can put it on the outside of the door and pull it open. If you put a block underneath of it, and then you can put your gusset in.

00:07:59:18 - 00:08:19:07 Speaker 1 Not hard to fix. It's going to if you do the firebox and the collector and all the other cuts and get those welded up, then it's going to minimize how much deceit and trickery you got to use to get that door to match up. And then on top of all of that, there's this word we have in manufacturing called tolerance.

00:08:19:09 - 00:08:57:13 Speaker 1 And, we it's something it's just like a thing that we say, look, this is good enough. Like, no one's really going to notice but us. It bothers us. But at the same time, the customer's not, like, usually worried about whatever this is and it's not going to affect performance. That's the word tolerance in my language. And so what me what that means in English is like I always wondered, like the guys that are producing every single day, the guys with all the attention, for instance, Sunny Moberg, I call sunny up one day and asked him, I said, sunny, what do you, what do you do on your doors?

00:08:57:13 - 00:09:21:01 Speaker 1 Like when when do you chase this door and try to get it right? And sunny said, 316 of an inch. If I've got three, 6/10 of an inch of play, that's the maximum. And at that point it is a judgment call. If it's less than 3/16 of an inch, we got nothing to talk about. Just move on down the road because this is an airflow game and we're not worried about like leaking a little bit of air, so to speak.

00:09:21:01 - 00:09:44:07 Speaker 1 So I hope that answered your question there. That's what these things are all about Greg, is is getting going to the deep end of the pool and, me bantering on about how I feel about stuff. As many pitches we have built in as long as I've been doing them, you know, and I hate seeing people just get discouraged because they've got a door that leaks or something like that.

00:09:44:07 - 00:10:07:23 Speaker 1 Don't get discouraged and don't worry about it. You can always just metal. You can always come back and chase it. And, you know, most likely the only guy that's going to ever say anything about it is somebody you have no idea who they are in the comments on some Facebook group, and he's just being a jerk anyway, so that's why we have smoker builder you, so you don't have to talk to those guys because these guys don't really care.

00:10:07:23 - 00:10:15:16 Speaker 1 They'll give you advice if you care, but it's they're never going to yell at you about your doors. That's how this works. So there you go guys.

00:10:15:16 - 00:10:31:07 Speaker 1 Oh. Wait, let me say one more thing about Greg's question there. By the way, whenever I have to reinforce my doors or pull them back into submission, my favorite thing to use is just a piece of, like, quarter inch or 3/8 or whatever, round bar.

00:10:31:09 - 00:10:51:03 Speaker 1 And then I just pull the door where it needs to be, and then I'll just tack that on both ends. Guys like Mike Garza, he's you're watching, he's done some fancy stuff with like, turnbuckles and stuff like, you can get those at there like a left and a right hand thread that stick out. And then you can tighten that down and pull your door where you want it.

00:10:51:03 - 00:11:06:19 Speaker 1 And then you can just leave it in there and jam nut, or you can, put a different brace in there and cut your turnbuckle out. Both of those are great, great ways to do that. We should probably spring the poop out of something one day and see if we can fix it on camera. I've just never I've doing it my way.

00:11:06:19 - 00:11:12:03 Speaker 1 I never have anything spring, so, I never have to fix it. So there you go.

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