Well, I was w/ all y'all in spirit- I missed the whole sign-up thing. I was in no cell-service/ spotty, worse-than-dial-up internet access in a New Hampshire North Country rental cabin when I saw it Friday. I had a meager rib cook, but I wanted to pat myself on the back here for "restoring" an '04 OTS by releasing its frozen ash blades.
There are 5 rental cabins here but only 1 w/ a Weber- the rest are CharBroils. Luckily, we arrived before any other cabin guests so I swapped our CB for the trusty OTS. I've used it in previous years, and the blades have always been stuck WO. Also, the lid had a big ding near the vent which couldn't properly seal. This wasn't a problem other than I couldn't shut the air down to save unused fuel. (I would use foil to block the intakes if I wanted to go low and slow.)
This year I brought some baby backs up and figured to be using foil again but then I thought wth, I'm gonna go down to the hardware store and see what they have in the anti-rust dept.
I had a slotted screwdriver and small adjustable in the trunk...so, I cleaned up the bowl and drowned the OT in Liquid Wrench and waited about an hour. Then I tapped the thumbscrew w/ the driver and wrench a few times, put the wrench on the thumbscrew, and it came free. More LW and some careful twisting and the OT lever worked free. Everything was lubed some more and the blades moved nice and easy- intake control!
Then I took the lid over to a picnic table and used the edge of the seat to sort of hammer out the ding so that the vent made a decent seal.
I put some 0000 steel wool on that baby and shined her up a little, then set up a ring of fire.
Here's some pics of the fun I had:
Congrats to all the entries- some great looking food and kettles!