As Promised



Detail of the mech




Detail of the two heros, i'm the handsome chap on the left in my specially designated cuntry hat.



The whole shebang with lamb, takes about 2 hours to get to this point if you're using wood.

Regards,

Amir

For the avoidance of doubt, Amir is the one wearing the highly suspect hat.

The techincal details appear fine.....Woodsman's Craft fire also O.K. (big points for Boy Scouts) - I'm more concerned with the green "flavoring", spices or sticky bits stuck onto the carcass.

Interesting pic and I suspect FB is already wondering where he can buy such a device!

Did you make that yourself or is a bought item?

quote:

Originally posted by Pete E:
Interesting pic and I suspect FB is already wondering where he can buy such a device!

Did you make that yourself or is a bought item?

I'm gonna have to stop hanging around here as I'm just getting predictable... Time to get some mystery back!!

Anyway Where can I buy one of those?

Here is a picture of the kit I have in Cyprus but I never get round to getting it sent home here. We often iuse it for small pigs and lambs as it just fits in the car or pick up and you can light the coals on the floor. I have some pictures of another set up dad has put together at his home on the big BBQ. I'll post those tonight if I get a chance.





This makes me think we need to light a BBQ at Baldock!!

Rgds,
FB

"...green "flavoring", spices or sticky bits stuck onto the carcass..."



FB will you please explain to gerry why this comment is fighting talk anywhere from the mediterranian east!

The "green" was either rosemary or Oregano, artfully applied the evening before as a marinating rub as a secret balm of garlic, olive oil, oregano, rosemary, saffron, somauc, barberry puree, salt and pepper.

The spit itself is home made, i picked up welding during my mis-spent youth and the chap who i am with in these photo's father is former engineer. He did the tricky bits on the lathe and I designed and did the welding. It was a good project but a bit over-engineered as in our ignorance we originally picked july for the first ever pig roast and hence needed to accomodate a 6 foot pig. Took Fookin hours to cook!

Can do another one if anyone wants and doesn't mind a bit of a wait.

Amir,

I think you can buy the motor/gearing ect especially for these as I seem to remember a bunch of Kiwi's building smaller versions using stainless steel beer kegs for the "fire box"..

Must learn to weld; it certainly opens up the way to build all sorts of interesting projects!

Regards,

Pete

oh yeah!

If a shooting is irrevocably influencing from afar then welding is the same sort of thing close up!

Pete, I use empty Castrol drums by aesthetic preference, oh and try arc welding first BTW.. Happy holing!

Now i need to find someone to build a build a high seat for.... with eaves and a separate wing for the dog.. and a lift .... and a coffee machine and a...

Enough of that i think.

I was wondering about that "green stuff" myself.
Thought you might have dropped the carcass on the ground, and was to stoned to even see it.
But on the other hand, you looked quite sober...

Ok...glad Gerry had the nerve to ask

Anyway, a great set up

Amir,

Don't forget the gunrack and gralloching bar.

There's a thread in there for the ultimate highseat. What accessories woult you require?

I was a a mates a while back who has garden sheds put up on stilts with a "balcony" entrance. Three shooting benches on each of the sides and carpet on the inside!! They are very cool, but I can;tbring myself to use them in good weather... It seems like the ultimate highseat for when it's really cold.

I'll take some photo's next time I'm up there.

Rgds,
FB

Amir,

I meant to ask, what sort of electric motor does your spit use? I've heard of windscreen wiper motors being used, and I guess you could use the motor out of a 12V cordless drill providing you get the gearing sorted...How fast do these things turn? I'm guessing about 10 RPM?

Regards,

Pete

Oh the innocence Arild and Gerry! you were hoping i would slip up and reveal the secret of my marinade!



Bugger, i did already! Well to reiterate the green stuff is either Rosemary or Oregano crushed and infused into oil and lovingly anointed on Mr Woolyback. No grass(!), small caterpillars or lengths of garden twine or anything else before we start again. Oh and the whiteish stuff is garlic before anyone becomes alarmed

Kiri,
All that place sounds like it needs is radar dish on the roof! Sit in with a cuppa, amiably arguing about calibre and rifle choice until a steady blipping hushes everyone into silence.Lots are drawn after a tense moment and the one with the short straw is handed a rifle and sent out into the blizzard.
Not allowed back in without a deer!

Pete,
The motor is a small mains powered one from an industrial conveyor belt that my mates dad had liberated at some point. the trouble with low voltage drill and wiper motors are that they are not designed to run for hours at a time. the average lamb takes 3-5 hours to cook depending on the fire but the 70 kg pig took 9 hours! On that first roast we had a wiper motor doctored to go round continously and a bicycle chain and sprocket and blew the motor after an hour. As the thing rotates, unless the animal perfectly counterbalanced on the spit - tried it but too much hassle, at some point in its rotation it will be trying to spin the spit under its own weight and that force goes back through the geartrain and if its short geared it stalls the motor!
With a small high speed motor the gear train is long, ie large overall gearing ratio, it is mechanically much more difficult for the load of the spit to exert a force on the motor.

Hence MK3 which is in the photo's above! Took months of looking around with a bit of lateral thinking the main bit were:

1. Industrial motor high speed - 4000 rpm
2 Cheapy gearbox - brass gears, the motor had a gearbox on it, see in the first picture, if not so luck anything will do as long as it reduces the speed down to about 100-200 rpm
3.Beefy gearbox- our came from a mobility device, great for parts those things i must say! reduces it to 10 rpm
4. sprocket and chain reduces it to about 1 rpm

The slower the better in my view, i'm working on some sort of speed controller and possibly see if i can find a good 12v motor! YOu have to get lucky with the bit if you want to make a good one unfortunatly!

last thing, sorry for longwinded post, is don't use a belt drive on anything! The B@astards melt, get greasy and slip and generally piss people off in this context.

Regrds,

Amir

Oh dear, I have just created my latest roasting spit and granted it is more agricultural but....the motor is 12v "wonder motor" courtesy e-bay USA, the v. belt and spit pulley came off a new holland big baler. The motor pulley is 2 washers sandwiching an inch of .308 brass. The firebox is a galvinised water trough that accidentally had a tractor muck fork put a row of holes in.
It's geared to turn the spit about 3 rpm.
In the past I have used a 240v electric cement mixer with the drum removed and a v belt to a grain auger pulley. Cooked to a tee a 30 kilo hogget in 2 hours start carving meat off.
Tne fire and the meat, i had within a metre of one another.
I hope my 50rpm "wonder motor" is going to cope!

Most greek/turkish supermarkets will sell the gearing systems already made up, as they are the same thing as is used for the regular spit roast BBQ's. There is a motor which is very good for turning heavy spits, that fits onto it. The Mechanism is fairly cheap, (I think about £10-£15) but the motor is quite expensive here.

I got a lcal steel works to design me my ultimate BBQ a while back but it was too pricey at the time to do in Stainless. I think there is someone else I can get to look at it and see if I can ressurect the project.

Rgds,
FB

Transpond,
I'm sure it will be perfect, you've already had success after all, i've had belts melt and slip but now that i think about it only with the pigs! I love he agricultaral look for this kind of machine, you should have seen the original, the top sprocket on the spit still had the bicycle pedal on it! i'll see if i can find photo's

FB, where can i get a gearbox? i've foung the perfect motor in maplin, its a heavy duty 12v with epicyclic gears that bring it down to 5-30 rpm for £25 should be perfect for the kits.
Thats two threads you've started now, ultimate high seat and now ultimate BBQ. I live in a flat so it's a case of dream on for me on the front but it could be fun to design!

Regards,

Amir

transpond,
Just found out what a baler is

Yes mate that pulley and belt ought to work just fine!!!

Amir,

These Are The Guys

If you click on "BBQ Deluxe" on the left hand menu then click on "More Information" below the partial picture you see their regular BBQ. If you see the bit that looks like the ace of spades the skewers go into it and the motor mounts on the back. You may need the specific motor that fits it. You can buy those to have one or three skewers to attach to them. Multiples are good if you have the thinner skewers and do things like tandoori turkey thighs for big parties or a number of haunchhes of pork or venison.

I'm looking at a similar design but much biggerthat is 150cmx90cm. It will have 6 or 8 width way skewers to do Souvla, chunks of chicken lamb or Pork on the bone, and a heavy Griddle of about 80cm x 50cm for steaks etc.

Length ways there will be a long spit to take the whole lamb/piglet.

The tray you can see at the front of this one will be there and there will be a bigger one at the side. Both will be removable for storage.

These kind of things do get me quite excitable, but I have to be sure of things like being able to get it into the back garden etc. The whole thing should be detachable from the stand so I think I should be able to get it through the door.

Dad built one in Cyprus for catering events. I have some photo's at home of it that I'll post later. The most we ever fed from it in one sitting was over 220 people.

Rgds,
FB

Amir,

For gears and drive chain, I would think you'd get everything you want off an old bike...In fact, if somebody wanted to build one of these from scratch,
I bet you could use the hubs/axles for each end of the spit too with a little imagination...

Regards,

Pete

FB,

That link is gold!

Did you see the worm gear that lets you turn all of the width-ways skewers at once! Pure passion

That is one classy BBQ the spit in the back garden is the ultimate accessory. Much like the Greek kebabs the kebabs back home need a go on long skewers and the meat is quite thin. This means they cook fast and need to be near the coals and not have a grill for the meat to stick to. This means that those freakin bell shaped jobs from B&Q are useless for making my mother’s type of kebabs! How much are one of those puppies roughly? Might get an exceptionally altruistic present for my dad as its his birthday soon…..

Need to light a fire at my parents this weekend I think, I could bore you all senseless with the minutia of the kebab bbq. It’s not easy; you need the right distance from the coals, sufficient air to the coals …..

Pete,

A bike is good for the final drive, ie attached to the spit itself, supplying the little sprocket, chain and the large sprocket wheel with the pedals on it. Looks tres rustique like this, I quite liked the pedals on the first spit but (someone else’s) good taste grudgingly prevailed.

The bearings for the spit are tricky. The difficluty of using the bike bearings is removing the spit from the frame to impale the beast and re-attaching it again afterwards. shoould be possible but i haven't tried it.With a lathe you can just find a pair of bearings and turn a spigot that fits in the scaffold pole at one end and in the bearing at the other. On the end with the sprocket you turn the spigot to fit in the bearing and the sprocket, drill through both and put a bolt through to stop it spinning on the shaft. Easy, just takes days that’s all.

Yes the worm gear is good but the one in the picture only does the 3mm skewers. The one I;m looking at turns 3/8" skewers. The good thing is that the worm gear and the side where the handle end of the skewers rests are on a system that raises and lowers them. that way the charcoal Temp can be manipulated to the meat.

I'm not sure on the price but I'll ask him for the price on one and then ask what price he'd do for two. The one in the pcture woudl turn a leg of Pork but that would be about as big as it could get on those skewers.

The only thing I have yet to fully decide on is the method of fixing the lamb to the spit. The bar through the spit looks like a good way to keep the back legs open rather than wireing them directly to the spit. I have also used the two parralel skewers that are in the phiti's I posted and also another thing that skewers the beast to the spit and is held in place with sprung clips.

Rgds,
Kiri

with a thick spit you can put holes every few inches for cross bars. The wire although not pretty wolds the thing when the legs become too cooked for the tendon to remain attached. I think this is the best way having tried the parallel bars because width and irregular shape aren't a problem with cross bars. I use stainless steel studding with a bolt wound on either side of the pole inside the cavity. For the pigs we had to drill their pelvis and shoulders to accept the crossmembers. Fookin harrowing but the pig was rock solid....

A few pictures of the the BBQ in Cyprus that I mentioned.