Wood Placement in the Smoke Box

[CUTiger80]

I have always placed my wood chunk (or chunks) at the very back of the smoke box and I have been putting it on a small piece of foil.  (I have not been wrapping it, but putting it on a double layer of foil just to make it easier to clean out.)  I purchased all of my wood from Fruita Wood, so it is decent quality.  I use an Auber and start out each smoke by letting the box temp go up to 140 deg for about 30 minutes then up to the final cooking temp.  For almost every smoke, the wood chunk at the end of the smoke is black and still firm.  (Last week I did BB ribs for 5.5 hours with the same result.  Wish I had taken a photo of the wood chunk at the end of the smoke.)  I have had a few smokes where the wood chunk turned to a whitish ash.  It does seem like I only get smoke out of the blow hole for the first 1 or 1-1/2 hours of the smoke.  I saw something in another post on this forum that seemed to indicate that varying the placement of the wood chunk in the wood box made a difference.
Is it normal for the wood to almost always be a black chunk at the end of the smoke?  Is there a better place in the wood box to place the chunk rather than in the very back?  (I understand that the wood chunk should not be placed over the holes in the bottom of the wood box.)
Any guidance or suggestions, as always, would be appreciated.

 

[Pork Belly]

Quit putting foil in the fire box, foil is for the bottom of the smoker and wrapping leftovers.

 

[old sarge]

I get pure ash.  Wood placed so it rests between the two legs of the element; no foil.  I also do not ramp up; I set the cook temp and let it rip.  Good smoke all the time.  As for how long the smoke lasts, I get a couple of hours, more or less, depending upon wind conditions. 

 

[CUTiger80]

I smoked 2 butts on Saturday and experimented a little with wood placement.  The following photos are the before and after photos of my wood chunks, without foil in the bottom.  This was after a 7 hour smoke at 215 deg.  (The wood chunks look the same as when I place a little foil under them and it was definitely not as easy to clean up as simply discarding the foil and wood ash.) Does this look normal to you guys?

 

[NDKoze]

Looks normal to me.

 

[es1025]

I typically space the wood out in the smoke box. Nothing fancy. I do like to have smaller piece to burn. No issues here. I dont wrap the wood either.

 

[RangerRick]

See my attachment to this thread - I have the exact same thing going on:

http://smokinitforums.com/index.php?topic=5070.15

 

[SconnieQ]

Ravel, your burned wood looks good to me. You've got some black char, some ash. More importantly, how did the food taste? You will find how your wood looks after a smoke will vary from black chunks to ash, depending on wood species, moisture content, size of pieces, placement in smoke box, temperature of smoke, etc. Wood is an organic product, and there are a lot of variables in wood that have nothing to do with your smoker/element, etc. Don't overanalyze it's exact appearance unless you are having trouble with how your food tastes, and even then, it is often an issue of adding more or less wood. I space mine out in the box, and I might have some black charred pieces and some ash, and that's success to me. I don't find the wood box difficult to clean out. Just slide it out, turn it upside down and dump it out. Not sure how foil would help very much with clean up, but maybe I'm missing something.