Scrap-Users Payback Time

Vaughn McMillan

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ABQ NM
I occasionally visit a BBQ forum (www.thesmokering.com), and it's surprising how much the BBQ folks are like the woodworking folks. It's a very sharing bunch of people, who like to post pics of their cookers and the food they make with them. (Just like our tool and project pics.) This forum has a range of expertise from rookie backyard chefs to commercial BBQ caterers and competition cooks, and the experienced guys are real willing to help us novices. A lot of the guys there are also into building their own cookers. (Stu got some advice there when he was doing his recent cooker build.)

I mentioned there a while back that I needed to add a drain to my outdoor cooker, but hadn't figured out a good way to attach a drain pipe and valve to the bottom of the cooking chamber. One of the regular members there (and a prolific builder of very nice cookers) sent me a PM and offered to make something to help me out. After I sent him the diameter of my cooker, he sent me this...

NBBD Drain - 01 800.jpg NBBD Drain - 02 800.jpg

I added a 3/4" ball valve to the pipe nipple, drilled a hole in the bottom of my cooker, added a bit of high-temp silicone sealer, some wire, and an empty dog food can, and ended up with this...

NBBD Drain - 13 800.jpg NBBD Drain - 14 800.jpg

I was very grateful for the help, but the guy who made the part wouldn't accept any money for it. He even refused to let me pay the postage. He said it was just scraps from his shop, and for him, shop time was fun time, so he enjoyed the chance to help someone (a complete stranger) out.

So a couple weeks ago, I decided to use up some of my scraps, and spend a little fun shop time myself. The end result showed up on his doorstep Tuesday. It's about 11 1/4" x 9 1/2", curly maple and walnut, with a little mineral oil for good measure...

KAM's Board 1 - 800.jpg

This guy (k.a.m.) and his wife (Mrs. k.a.m., also a member on that forum) both do a lot of cooking, so I figured it was something they could get some use out of. Based on the PM he sent me Tuesday evening, I'd say they were both pleasantly surprised. :D He told me that a knife blade won't ever get close to it, something I've heard from almost everyone who has one of my "cutting" boards. ;)
 
I don't get the draining a bbq cooker part. :huh:
Wats to drain? :dunno:

When you're slow cooking fatty cuts of meat like pork butt roast, or bacon-wrapped anything, you get a fair amount of drippings. The drain makes for a handy way to remove them from the bottom of the cooking chamber. Keep in mind, the fire is in a separate box, off to the side. On a grill, the fat burns off. In a slow cooker, it just gathers at the bottom of the cooking chamber. My cooker is an offset woodburner that I converted to run on propane, with wood chunks added for flavor. It's essentially a smoke-flavored oven that runs at 225º to 250º for hours at a time. This pic was taken before I added the drain:

NBBD Mods 21 - 800.jpg
 
When you're slow cooking fatty cuts of meat like pork butt roast, or bacon-wrapped anything, you get a fair amount of drippings. The drain makes for a handy way to remove them from the bottom of the cooking chamber. Keep in mind, the fire is in a separate box, off to the side. On a grill, the fat burns off. In a slow cooker, it just gathers at the bottom of the cooking chamber. My cooker is an offset woodburner that I converted to run on propane, with wood chunks added for flavor. It's essentially a smoke-flavored oven that runs at 225º to 250º for hours at a time. This pic was taken before I added the drain:

View attachment 35877

I've always kept a pan of water under the meat, adds some moisture to the mix and catches the drippings.

Ain't nothing better than BBQ:thumb::D:thumb:
 
That's a nice payback Vaughn! :thumb: It's amazing how much giving goes on in the BBQ and Woodworking communities, there really are some close similarities between them.

We did a competition a few years back where a storm came through and literally picked out one team out of 60 and destroyed their tent and tumbled their smoker a few hundred feet. They were packing up to leave when a bunch of us loaned them the stuff they needed to cook. Not only did they cook, they ened up winning at least one ribbon.
 
Or in my case, the other way around. :p

Talk about Brains, during the process of thinking about that link & trying to get it to work, I COMPLETELY FORGOT to mention that the cutting board is a REAL Beauty. (Glad to see you haven't COMPLETELY Lost your previous exceptional skills for FLATWORK).:thumb::D
 
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