Does anyone stagger their warm up time with the wood placement?

[Tom]

I noticed today with my bacon I'm currently smoking, that my method of going the simplest route may not be the best. Namely, I just placed the 3 oz of sugar maple in the tray and set my temp. But it's barely been an hour and the smoke has already stopped.

Does anyone prefer to get their smoker closer to their planned starting temp before even adding wood? Knowing it's obviously going to cool down a fair bit while you're opening the door and fiddling with hot metal to get your wood in place.

I don't think I had any incineration going on, the heat rise on the 3D didn't go nuts. I'm just wondering if it's worth the effort to stoke the wood after the heat up has already gotten mostly done...

 

[SuperDave]

Tom, these boxes are sealed in a way that even after the wood is done, smoke stays in the box.  It is one of the reasons that opening the smoker during smokes is not encouraged.  Also, with the way that the power element pulses after getting close to temp, I'd bet that you wouldn't get enough heat to start smoke. 

 

[DivotMaker]

Tom, adding wood, after it heats up, is highly discouraged.  What temp did you have it set to?  If you were low (which I suspect), chunks are not the best choice.  I've smoked as low as 140 (cold smoking, with the plate, is different...I'm just referring to box temp with meat in there).  For that low, I split my chunks into slivers.  This works good for me.  Some folks like chips or pellets, for low-temp smokes. 

 

[Tom]

Tom, adding wood, after it heats up, is highly discouraged.  What temp did you have it set to?  If you were low (which I suspect), chunks are not the best choice.  I've smoked as low as 140 (cold smoking, with the plate, is different...I'm just referring to box temp with meat in there).  For that low, I split my chunks into slivers.  This works good for me.  Some folks like chips or pellets, for low-temp smokes.

Sorry, I set it to 180ºF. I mentioned in another thread the problems I'm now seeing with the wide variances I'm seeing with the PID, it's staying at 205ºF and not dropping much below, for quite a while now.

 

[DivotMaker]

See my post in the other thread, Tom.  Try an autotune, and things should tighten-up.