Hi,

I did a little smoker rehab this weekend. I've got one of the Brinkmann horizontal smokers that I've had and enjoyed for many years, my kids got it for me as a Father's Day gift and I love using it.
First, I repainted it with the original flat black stove paint. That was the easy job. Next, I went about replacing the front shelf, just below the lid of the main box. That was a chore, but it looks better than the original three cedar planks that were the original equipment.
I went and bought a 1" x 11" x 4' red oak plank, it's about 3' wider than the original 3 board shelf. I cut it down to 35", which is the length of the main box. I then stained it with red oak stain and it looked really good, but I shortly realized I had made a mistake. When I went to drill the holes through the board and then used a paddle bit to allow me to countersink the heads of the bolts into the wood, The stain doesn't penetrate that deep into the wood and it didn't look very good. I restained the whole board including the countersink holes. The problem with that being the 8 hr. dry time before you can do anything else. I ruined two hi speed drill bits drilling out the hole in the support brackets under the shelf, but I got it done. That was pretty much my Saturday as far as working on the smoker went.
My brother and I did smoke and bar-b-que a chicken that was really good and I did make and canned my mom (special request), who will be in from Tennessee tomorrow, a gallon of my Cranberry Juice Cocktail Bar-B-Que sauce.
On Sunday I got up early and put a coat of polyurethane on all all sides of the plank. of course I had to let those dry and as the day went along and the sun got higher with a nice steady little breeze, the dry time got down to about an hour and a half. I also did a light scuff sanding between coats to give the next something to adhere to. I gave the bottom and the side towards the smoker box two additional coats. I then mounted the plank onto the smoker and gave the top and more exposed sides about 5 more coats of polyurethane.
It really looks nice, I just hope the polyurethane holds up to the weather the way I want it to. It was tough deciding between polyurethane and something like Thompson's Water Seal.
You could say it was a pretty busy weekend.

TTFN,
Chuck