I'm pretty excited about this...
I've been cooking on an el cheapo Brinkman smoker for the last 4-5 years and it's ok, but nothing special. It needs the charcoal replaced every 2-3 hours, which makes smoking something like a brisket a real pain, especially if I'm doing it overnight for lunch. It also doesn't hold much meat. I wanted something bigger and more efficient, but I'm cheap, so I decided to build it myself. I found a thread on "Ugly Drum Smokers" here
http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=23436 and decided to give it a try. It sounds like these things are taking the barbeque world by storm, since they make great Q without having to dump a lot of money into a professional rig.
So, I found a used drum that formerly held soybean oil and went to work. I used a jigsaw with a metal cutting blade to cut the top out, and added a lid from a knock off of a Weber grill. I think it turned out pretty well. On my first test this weekend it ran for 7 hours on a 1/2 load of charcoal, without having to adjust the air vents much. It made the best smoked chicken I've ever had, along with a bunch of sausage too. If you're into barbeque and are competent enough to run a drill and saw you owe it to yourself to build one of these:
