The next step in the journey towards a a completely oversized, unnecessary, yet totally cool cooker is a salvage pit from my next-door neighbor.

Sixteen inch diameter, thirty-six inch long cooking chamber, 1/8" steel, welded hinges on the doors.

It had been sitting by the back fence for at least a year.  One day as I was tending to my little Texas hibachi we got to talking, naturally the conversation turned toward my habit of firing up the cooker every weekend.

I asked if he ever used his pit.
"No."
"Want to get rid of it?"
"Yes."

Talk about a sucker, I hauled away his trash and brought him a pork butt in return.

An offset has obvious advantages over the barrel - more usable cooking space, heavier construction and better heat retention.  I was in too much of a hurry to make it serviceable to get any true "before" pictures...but it was caked inside with bright orange rust and there was an old wasp nest in the firebox.

Great thing about steel, if there's enough there you can scrape away the rust and make it usable.  Thirty minutes of scraping and a wire brush later and the inside's clean enough for a coat of peanut oil and a good burn in.  Not perfect and not all that pretty, but capable of cranking out a couple of butts and a couple of racks of ribs its first full weekend in the driveway.

I give the first effort a C+.  Cooking on a new pit is always an adventure.

As of today the offset has forced the barrel into semi-retirement.  The only way to learn how a pit cooks is cooking.  Three or four weekends and this baby will be turning out some top shelf bbq.

I think this little offset could be something special with a little tweaking.  First would be some dampers and tuning plates to even out the heat distribution.  I'll wager there's a 50-75° difference from the firebox end to the smokestack end. Shore up the seal around the edge of the firebox and replace the half-butterfly vent with something more precise.  New, sturdier legs and wheels are a must.  A bigger shelf would be nice.  Sausage hanging rods.  Replacing the existing bolts by permanently attaching the firebox to the cooking chamber.  First is a thermometer since the hole is already drilled.

I sheared the cooking grate in half to ease stoking the fire.  A drip pan is a must for slow cooking to keep grease from backing up into to the fire and flaring up or giving the meat a funny taste.  A self-contained burn box would be a huge improvement.

As further proof of my madness, I recently purchased a Hobart MIG welder with the intention of teaching myself to weld.  Long term goal is to build a reverse flow pit roughly the size of a 250 gallon propane tank.  Short term goal is to burn up 20 pounds of flux core wire and try to become a semi competent welder.  It's cheap to get scrap sheet metal and angle iron, so I'll start off making some sort of Franken-grill out of the Texas hibachi.  At least I won't feel too bad if I burn up a barrel.  Soon I'll be prowling the local scrap yards looking for raw materials to begin assembling a true Texas-sized pit.

As a result, things got a little rusty where the water sat.  Now it's  a puddle of peanut oil.

Being able to experiment with a zero-investment pit should be a real advantage when I'm ready to get serious about building something large and expensive.  I've had a few monkey doing a math problem moments when I see what seems an obvious improvement on cooker design and can't figure out why nobody's building 'em that way.  I guess now I'll see my visions are revolutionary or boneheaded.  It is better to act the fool and remove all doubt than just sit idly by. At the very least I'll learn along the way.Stick wood is a cooker this small is still a challenge.  It's not all that much bigger than a barrel and there's a BIG opening into the cooking chamber.  Probably made with charcoal in mind.  This is where determination to ignore common sense and press forward with hare-brained schemes proves invaluable.  It cries out for a damper and plates to even out the flow of heat.

It's still much easier to use than the barrel and will fill in nicely until I'm ready to further hone my welding and metal-working skills customizing it.  Any pit will do once you get the hang of it.  Like I need an excuse to cook every weekend.  I'm sure by the time I'm ready to start construction of a king-sized pit this little offset will be working so well I'll be asking myself why I need another pit.

Why not?  It's not like anything can ever be too big in Texas.  People always ask if I'll cook up some meat for them if they bring it by.  What if they all took me up on it the same weekend?  I'd have to work like a Chinaman on meth.  Not so in a pit with a 28"x60" main grate, a shelf or two, and sausage hanging rods.  A 1/2" steel 28"x28"x28" square firebox with a lid on top for cowboy bbq.  Unnecessarily big for 97% of the times I bbq; but readily capable those rare occasions when I want to feed 20-30 people (or four guys on a college football Saturday...) with no sides - just meat, bread, and sauce.

There's something to be said for the "gee whiz" factor when it comes to pits.  A pit that gets the neighbor's attention.  A pit that draws a crowd.  A pit that looks cool, cooks right, and was handmade right in your own backyard is truly fit for a king.  The Texas BBQ King.

Doing it for no other reason than to do it.  Worst case scenario I'll squander a few hundred bucks and end up with an unworkable hunk of scrap metal.  Which I'll keep in my backyard forever to remind me of my folly until I am finally buried inside.  Better than pissing away time and money of something silly like golf.  You might could be buried with your favorite golf clubs, but you couldn't be buried in them.  So at least I've to that going for me.

A four dollar sheet of 12"x18" ungalvanized steel bent to fit and bolted in place as a heat baffle.

For now it's time to focus on becoming competent enough with a welder and a torch to make building a king-sized a practical matter.   A couple of local welders quoted me around $2,500 to custom build a pit from drawings.  No doubt by the time everything is said and done it will cost at least double that to build it myself.  So there's no sense burning up good metal for practice.  

Perhaps this will serve as either a cautionary tale or source of inspiration for someone else who is consumed by the notion of building their own cooker.  I'll keep track of my progress and share everything I learn along the way.  God knows it may drag out for a decade before I wise up and call a professional.

One man's trash is another man's treasure.  I'll probably end up using this little pit until the bottom burns out.  Even after I have a massive pit.  But for know it's time to try and upgrade this little offset.  Shouldn't be too tough since there won't be much fabrication - just cutting and welding some plate, angle, and flat steel.  I'll chronicle my decent into madness here for all to see.

Any pit can make great bbq, and this little castaway is no exception.  I'm just looking to make life easier. 

A couple of more views of the deflector baffle.  The material was thin enough to cut with tin snips and bend by hand using a door and the jamb as a sheet metal break.

Adding a baffle is my first modification to the little offset.  This is probably the first thing anyone should change if they have a smallish offset because it makes a huge difference in evening out the heat.  It's a relatively simple no-weld improvement that can be done for under ten bucks.  The firebox opening is rather large and controlling the temperature has always been a challenge.  Sausages hanging on a rod ended up cooked at the top while still 20-30 degrees from being done at the bottom.  Same deal when I dropped the grill to fit beer can chickens inside.  Too much heat at the top and too cool below the grill.  No more.  This baffle blocks the radiant heat out of the firebox from entering the cook chamber (so meat at the firebox end of the grill doesn't get scorched) and forces the heat down to give an even temp all around.  I may eventually fiddle with some tuning plates, but that's probably just a waste in a cooker this small.