I can not say enough good things about the guys at PK!! they were easy to work with very helpful, and in the end sent me a new unit. Honestly it was the Holy Grail of customer service!! the kind you dream of but never find. Thanks to Jeff and all at PK for your help.

By heating sawdust without O2, methane gas is given off in huge amounts. I could collect 2 full 50 gallon inflated bags of methane gas from 1c of sawdust!
I used the methane to drive bunsen burners for various distillation or messing around. Also collected would be 2 T or more of acetic acid, like vinegar, collected in the bags.

In any case, that is for sure enough methane to blow a smoker up if ignited. So, scenario: mostly sealed smoker, little O2 inside. Heat sawdust without ventilation, get 50 to 100 gallons of ambient pressure methane built up in there. One single granule of anything in there igniting, any sawdust smoldering, would ignite the methane. Methane air mixes have been shown to ignite constantly from light alloy sparks. We would tape a model rocket electic ignition squib in the bag, and set them off for quite the good flash.

I would not heat sawdust in low o2 low airflow airtight environment that could be later subjected to ignition source after gas buildup. The whole gradual electical element heating of sawdust in an enclosed chamber where you’re hoping at some point it gets hot enough to begin smoldering is a setup for methane air mix explosion. I’m amazed it doesn’t happen more often. Far safer is already smoldering pellets/wood to produce smoke, like an external smoke daddy etc.

It is the first Email correspondence I received on the subject.

Steve,
I apologize for the delayed reply as I’ve been working with the customer you referenced below from Walton’s website and his name is also Steve….in my mind, I had blended you both together. While we’ve got the other Steve taken care of I again apologize as I realize your inquiry has been idle.

We have not ever heard of this happening and we’ve had the PK in existence for almost 40 years with literally thousands of them in the field. There have been 3 instances where the smoker sides buckled when pellets were used…twice by consumers and once by our testing, but never before with sawdust. Pellets or wood chunks can absorb a great amount of heat and if ember is not created, you can get pressure to build up and once the temp gets high enough, along with the wrong mix of air flow, you get that massive ignition/combustion and pressure release. That’s why we over-mention the use of only sawdust for smoke within the first 4 pages of the manual.

We are having that unit brought back to our facility but there will be limited testing we can do on it. The customer is adamant that he only had sawdust in the smoke pan, so we can only assume that he got very high heat on the element without an ember starting and once temps got to that high enough point, airflow caused that ignition and release of pressure. But he also mentioned that this occurred in under 2 minutes and it would be very difficult to get that type of pressure to build up that quickly. We may never fully know the root cause of this. For my personal use, I do “slightly” moisten the sawdust when I’m smoking. It gives me just a slight amount of humidity in the chamber which is great for smoke distribution to the product when smoking. That being said, there are plenty out there who do not moisten the sawdust.

I also use my index finger and create a dimple in the center of the sawdust….the center of the pan is the hottest in smoke setting (625 low watt setting) and that allows oxygen to the wood…wood to the heat…to give me quickest/most thorough smoke. I hope that made sense, but if you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to me directly. I’d be happy to help where I can.

Thanks for reaching out to us and I hope your move forward with your Pro Smoker plan……you will absolutely love it.

Jeff Warren
Account Executive
Pro Smoker ‘N Roaster / Vortron
Phone: (920)-387-5255 Ext. 147
Cell: (262)388-3839

Steve, we have been replying via email to what we believe has been you since the 23rd and have had no reply. Can you call us direct at 800-328-8313 and ask for Earl or Jeff

steve4102 see the quoted post.

steve4102 You sent them an email to the info@pro-smoker.com address above and they didn’t respond to that? You could tag the group again if you want them to see it here, they seem to have created an account for this topic.

Yes, and no they did not respond.

Got a link to this “account” they created?