Tulsa_Fireman
11/19/2008, 12:35 AM
Dilemma. Pin your ears back. This is gonna take awhile.
Here at the fire station, we used to have a real nice grill. An ol' boy built it years ago and when he retired from my house, he obviously took the grill with him with our blessing. It's only right, right? Enter the dilemma.
We've gone through the rounds with storebought grills since it's been gone. Knobs melting off, the grills themselves essentially melting and sagging into a bowed, warped piece of slaggy shiite. Unacceptable. Especially since at a minimum $250 bucks a shot is coming out of our wallets, the firefighters of Station 25. So being the resident nosegrinder, I've taken it upon myself to cure what ails us. Time to build a grill. It has to last on the order of years. It has to be cheap, at least cheaper than the pieces of crap we've been using. It has to run on natural gas. And it has to throw down a kick *** set of chops, ribs, chicken, whatever it is we throw at it. Enter the development phase.
Didja know you can make a homemade propane or natural gas burner for your grill? Yup. A lil' black pipe, a bell coupling for the venturi, a means to mount a 1/4 nipple and cap in the center of the bell coupling that you've tapped appropriately for your specific fuel. I thought the internet would be a fountain of knowledge on this but for once in the history of its being, the internet sucks donkey balls for proper jet diameter, burner port size, et cetera. After mindless trial and error (and ruining a few caps in the process), this is what I figured out. 3/4" black for the burner body, 3/32" ports at 1/4" spacing for CNG, 5/32" @ 1/4" for LPG. That goes to a 3/4"x1 1/4" bell coupler, where you need to fab a piece of steel to be able to mount a 1/4" street elbow to jet dead center of the wide end of the bell coupler. Capped on the coupler side of the piece of steel, you need to tap a #60 in that cap for propane, 1/8" for CNG. These are the sizes that seem to perform best with clean combustion, no overpressure to blow out flame at the ports on the burner, and sufficient air from the venturi you just built to promote that clean combustion. Burns like a rocket. It just took your friendly neighborhood idiot a solid two weeks to nail down the jet sizes.
Enter the pipe. 3/8" x 24" diameter pipe, a gift from our good friend Roger Cook at Mattsco here in Tulsa. 1 1/2" 11 gauge square tube for the frame, dado cut and bolted with crossbraces to form matching Xs for the pipe to rest in. One inch grating on 1 1/2" angle for the grill surface. Those burners tied together with good ol' Atwoods pipe fittings to form a 3 burner manifold.
And the best part, she's almost done. Under budget, stronger and more durable than expected, and just a few welds and cuts away from her first slab of dead cow. I'm thinkin' we'll christen her with ribeyes. And I highly recommend, if you have any inkling of wanting a grill that will last you until your grandkids get on the Department, giving this a shot. Most fun, most challenging project I've taken on in a LOOOONG time.
Pics when it's all ready to rock.
Here at the fire station, we used to have a real nice grill. An ol' boy built it years ago and when he retired from my house, he obviously took the grill with him with our blessing. It's only right, right? Enter the dilemma.
We've gone through the rounds with storebought grills since it's been gone. Knobs melting off, the grills themselves essentially melting and sagging into a bowed, warped piece of slaggy shiite. Unacceptable. Especially since at a minimum $250 bucks a shot is coming out of our wallets, the firefighters of Station 25. So being the resident nosegrinder, I've taken it upon myself to cure what ails us. Time to build a grill. It has to last on the order of years. It has to be cheap, at least cheaper than the pieces of crap we've been using. It has to run on natural gas. And it has to throw down a kick *** set of chops, ribs, chicken, whatever it is we throw at it. Enter the development phase.
Didja know you can make a homemade propane or natural gas burner for your grill? Yup. A lil' black pipe, a bell coupling for the venturi, a means to mount a 1/4 nipple and cap in the center of the bell coupling that you've tapped appropriately for your specific fuel. I thought the internet would be a fountain of knowledge on this but for once in the history of its being, the internet sucks donkey balls for proper jet diameter, burner port size, et cetera. After mindless trial and error (and ruining a few caps in the process), this is what I figured out. 3/4" black for the burner body, 3/32" ports at 1/4" spacing for CNG, 5/32" @ 1/4" for LPG. That goes to a 3/4"x1 1/4" bell coupler, where you need to fab a piece of steel to be able to mount a 1/4" street elbow to jet dead center of the wide end of the bell coupler. Capped on the coupler side of the piece of steel, you need to tap a #60 in that cap for propane, 1/8" for CNG. These are the sizes that seem to perform best with clean combustion, no overpressure to blow out flame at the ports on the burner, and sufficient air from the venturi you just built to promote that clean combustion. Burns like a rocket. It just took your friendly neighborhood idiot a solid two weeks to nail down the jet sizes.
Enter the pipe. 3/8" x 24" diameter pipe, a gift from our good friend Roger Cook at Mattsco here in Tulsa. 1 1/2" 11 gauge square tube for the frame, dado cut and bolted with crossbraces to form matching Xs for the pipe to rest in. One inch grating on 1 1/2" angle for the grill surface. Those burners tied together with good ol' Atwoods pipe fittings to form a 3 burner manifold.
And the best part, she's almost done. Under budget, stronger and more durable than expected, and just a few welds and cuts away from her first slab of dead cow. I'm thinkin' we'll christen her with ribeyes. And I highly recommend, if you have any inkling of wanting a grill that will last you until your grandkids get on the Department, giving this a shot. Most fun, most challenging project I've taken on in a LOOOONG time.
Pics when it's all ready to rock.