It's almost done. Just have to line the inside with metal and put the grate in. Here are some picks. Cost me about $370 to build which was quite a bit more than I though. Here is the microwave after the completed wood work: I had a local welder fab me a diamond plate pan for the top to hold the coals. A few shots of the with the pan installed:
Well I finished the microwave and used it last weekend. I'd say it was a big success. I cooked a 22 lbs pig and 2 hens. The pig cooked about 6 hours and the hens about 4.5 hours. Everything turned out great. One thing I found out was its very important to remove the ash from the coals as they burn. I knew this was necessary but did not realize how much. When I first put the pig in I had about 8lbs of charcoal on there. This stabilized at about 280 deg which was perfect. After about two hours the temp was steadily dropping even as we kept shoveling more coals on. I'm talking a 60-70 drop in temp with a much hotter fire than we started with. We have about 20 lbs of red hot coals and could barely get it up to 225 deg. So I shoveled all the coals off into a crawfish basket and sifted out all the ash. Once I put them back on the temp shot right back up. Here are some pics.
Yeah. After about two hours the temp keep dropping dispite adding more and more coals.. We had about 15 lbs or red hot coals on top and still could not get the temp in the box above 200 deg. That's when I recalled reading that you need to remove the ash so I shoveled everything off, sifted out the ash using a crawfish basket, and then dumped the coals back on. The temp shot up 150 degrees in about 2 minutes. I know that the ash would act as an insulator I just didn't realize how extreme the effect would be.
