The Barrel Smoker - DIY Lid Handle

DIY Lid Handle

A regular door pull works OK as a handle for the lid on your ugly drum smoker and they are cheap, usually costing only a few dollars. An alternative to buying a handle is to take a little time and make your own handle. It’s simple to do and it can be customized to fit your hand when wearing a heavy duty pair of grill gloves.

Grill Gloves

To make mine I used a piece of metal that was handy, bent it into a handle shape with my bench vise, drilled a couple of mounting holes and it was ready to go! It’s now a lot easier to grab the handle when wearing those big old grill gloves! If you want to further customize it, you can split an old piece of wooden dowel pin, drill a couple of more holes and add custom wood grips to your handle or just use a wooden dowel pin and a couple of stout bolts to make a handle. Nothing better than the feeling you get when you’ve made it yourself.

Above are top and side views of my handle with wood added. I used a couple of pieces of wood moulding that were on hand and just cut it to length. I drilled two holes and used a couple of screws from an old doorknob locking plate to hold it in place. I didn't get it perfectly aligned but it still works. Now I can pick up the handle without gloves and not worry about how hot it may be.

For now my new smoker barrel is going to have this plain handle, as I’m attempting to build this thing for $50 or less. Building a smoker barrel is simple and the only limit is your imagination. So get creative and use a little innovation when building your smoker barrel.

Staying above the water line!

Riverwalker