Smokin-It User Forum!
General Discussions => Show Us Your Setup! => Topic started by: LuvMyQ on November 24, 2018, 10:14:41 AM
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I love my new smoker. But after using it several times, I quickly learned that as I will hit 60 next year, I needed my smoker to sit higher. This bean my quest to custom build a cabinet for my 3D WIFI. Why not buy the prebuilt SI Stephanie cabinet? There are a few reasons.
1. I wanted more storage space.
2. I wanted a folding shelf.
3. I wanted the slide out “drip” shelf. (I saw a post from someone saying that would be a nice idea.)
4. I like “little” projects. But I am a perfectionist. My wife calls it OCD.
5. I lean towards being frugal.
Dimensions are roughly 27” square for the top and approximately 19” high plus casters. The box is only 24” deep because I did not want it deeper. The box depth choice was not a great design idea, as the back wall interfered with the locations of the smoker leg bolt location. That caused me a lot of grief. Construction is ¾” standard plywood. Coated deck screws were used on all plywood joints. All cutting was done using basic table saw and miter saw.
All exterior surfaces are covered with ¼” PVC sheet material that I have had for a couple of years, given to me free. That is the reason I did not buy marine grade plywood. All plywood was primed and painted (with 2 coats) before covering with PVC. The PVC was sprayed flat black and coated with satin polyurethane. I am not sure how that will look after summer/winter temperature extremes. The edging is 1” aluminum angle, which was added as a measure to protect the cut edges of the plywood from moisture, but also adds a nice appearance, and is held in place by adhesive caulk. The casters are the original SI casters. I was not pleased when I went to bolt on the unit to the cabinet. The legs are not welded onto the cabinet at 90 degrees, making them not sit squarely on all four corners of the leg. One was worse than others, with about an 1/8” gap on one corner. Oh well, not much I could do about that.
The inside shelf is just painted, no PVC. There are adjustment holes every inch spanning 10 inches, because I figure why not. I seriously doubt I will ever move it from the displayed position now that I have it dialed in. Right now, I can even store up to 3 unused grates on top of the bottom wood containers during the smoke.
The drip shelf is 2 pieces of the PVC sheet material glued together framed in ½” aluminum U channel. I used ½” aluminum angle for the drip shelf rails and devised some simple hold downs to keep it from tilting and a stop to keep it from coming completely out. I can remove it from the rear though. The U channel makes it pretty rigid. It has no problem holding a 15 LB hunk of meat. I unfortunately did not plan on clearance for the smoker‘s drip plan before the design. The drip shelf drug the bottom of the drip pan, wanting to pull it out with the shelf. So I had to modify the smoker’s tracks for the pan. They come where the horizontal edge is angled down, probably for easy aligning when you are putting the pan in. I had to bend those tracks upward to provide clearance. That was not an easy task to do without just taking a hammer to it, which would likely dent the bottom of the cabinet. But a couple of pairs of channel locks did the trick. I must say the drip shelf is my favorite feature.
And finally, because there is not a paved pathway from my garage to the patio, this will stay outside all the time. I do not have a covered outside area. So my wife made the custom vinyl cover. That was from a $20 remnant form the fabric store.. I am not sure how the vinyl will hold out with the weather. We’ll see. But now that she has done that, I am enlisting her to make a new cover for my Weber Performer. The $50 I bought from them lasted 2 years. >:(
As for the frugal part, probably only $175 less than the SI pre-built stainless cabinet. If I didn’t have the free PVC sheets, that would have added another $100. And if I look at my hourly rate for the research, design, build, trips to the store, my labor rate was probably less than $1 per hour. :( Nonetheless, it is everything I wanted it to be. So I thought I would share. Should any of you want more detail, just let me know.
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nice build,
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Very nice, lots of details. From a custom cabinet maker of 30 + years who is also OCD, my compliments!
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Wow! How awesome!
:)
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Beautiful work. Your eye for detail is outstanding.
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Wow a great deal of thought went into yours. I should of thought mine out a bit better but I can always rebuilt after seeing yours.
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Spectacular!
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What they said! Very impressive. (and I hear ya about the bending over not being so much fun)
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This is sweet! How did I miss this build! Gives me some ideas!
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Thanks Barelfly. And I indeed borrowed some other ideas in the design if this.
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I love this build! Now that you've been using it for a bit, what, if anything, would you change?
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LarryD, I would not have spent so much time making so many positions for the interior shelf adjustments (10). The shelf will likely never move. From a design perspective, I made the doors to hang lower than the base of the cabinet in case there was rain and I wanted the runoff to drip off the drawers and not enter the cabinet. With the cover, that is not really necessary. Plus it interferes with the locking mechanism on the front casters giving them limited rotation. I also think I may upgrade the casters (that I used from the SI) to larger ones. My paver patio is bumpy. I think bigger casters with more substantial bolt capabilities will make me feel like it is more sturdy to roll around.
But at this point, all the features and functions that I wanted work great. We need to waterproof the seams of the vinyl cover because a good rain will leave two small puddles on the top of the cabinet. And that water does leak into the inside of the cabinet on one side via the bolt holes I presume. Fortunately, the wood container below it catches the water in the container lid.
The pull out shelf was worth every bit of effort, as was the folding shelf.