Right before the COVID clampdown during the winter of ’19-’20, I picked up a smoking habit. Like many late 30s/early 40s, I started getting the itch to pick up smoking meat as a hobby. My wife and I had gone on a “mini-moon” after our wedding in October ’19 (planning on our “real” one the following spring, which… lol), camping for an extended weekend in Point Mugu State Park. We bought a Smokey Joe grill for the occasion, which worked out great. But the itch had started.
We were still in our condo, so storage space was at a premium. I couldn’t really justify another device (we already had a portable gas grill and a stationary pizza oven) so whatever I did would have to be built with the tiny Weber. Luckily, I came across these plans for a “Mini-WSM” project that converts a Smokey Joe into a reasonable facsimile of the much larger Weber Smokey Mountain. Jackpot. I was able to find the exact tamale pot easily (it was post-holidays in SoCal) and get to work.
I chopped out the bottom of the pot myself but did need a hand with some of the other bits. Luckily my brother-in-law knows how to weld, so he did the coal ring modification for me as well as take the chopped-out top and weld it to the bottom to act as a lip for sitting on the grill. The rest of the drilling was pretty straightforward and I even used a few champagne corks as damper handles.
While I did install a LavaLock thermometer in the lid, I kept track of cook temps using a simple ThermoPro dual-channel digital model. I couldn’t have been more pleased with how it turned out. It was very efficient, put out great food, and allowed the Joe to retain it’s original use case for trips to the beach or camping.
