Home made rotisserie ring

[HankB]

Thanks all for the kind words.

That looks awesome, HankB. Thanks for sharing. What other projects do you have cooking up?

I have some fairly heavy expanded metal I picked up recently. It's a lot heavier than the stuff I got at Home Depot - 10 gauge I think. The charcoal ring I made for my mini-WSM is already rusting through so I think I'll make another one of those as well as some charcoal baskets for the bigger grills.

P.S.  Nice Wheel Horse!   

And thanks for the welding tips.

Nice job Hank. I need one of these for my RK.

Do it!

I'm wondering if I can splice pieces together to make a ring to fit my 26. I have to see if the spit rod is long enough.

I cooked on it last night and have some further thoughts. I spitted two "oven stuffers" that were about 7 pounds each. When I went to put the spit into the ring, I ran into difficulties because the motor end of the spit needs to be level to line up with the motor. However when I had that end of the spit inserted as far as it could go without lining up, the chicken on the handle side of the spit did not quite clear the ring. It took a bit of persuasion to get it into the ring. One solution to this is to put less food on the spit, but I'm in the "go big or go home" camp.  I could gain a little extra clearance by expanding the hole on the spit end vertically. I could also fix this by hinging the motor mount or perhaps simply removing the brace I put on there to stiffen the motor mount, Perhaps simply putting the food on the spit closer to motor end would solve this. I could let the spit ride in the (spit) groove closest to the motor rather than one of the grooves at the handle end.

The other issue is the seal to the cooker. In addition to the slot, there are some gaps around the circumference of the bowl. I found it adequate for chicken. It would be less so if I wanted to do a low 'n slow, I think. With all vents open and one chimney of lump, it hit 425°F. When I put the birds on, I cut the bottom and top vents to about half and it settled at 325° and drifted down as the fuel was consumed. For low 'n slow I would have to meter the fuel as it stands I think. I believe I could achieve a better fit to the bowl by making relief cuts aroud the bottom edge. The overlap to reduce the diameter of the bowl was a compromise between fitting the bowl and fitting the lid and could be smaller to fit the bowl.