Monday, March 24, 2014

JMShearer Assembles: A GrillZone 14-inch Charcoal Kettle Grill

I'm not sure if this'll be much of a series, but they always start with one, right?

Here in the US, little boys like me grow up learning that you can't really call yourself a man until you use tools of some sort to put something together all by yourself. In some cases, this process specifically involves power tools and/or the simultaneous consumption of alcoholic beverages. Since I'm not really what you'd call a power tool fan, and I don't have much of a budget for booze at present, I had to come up with my own blend of Red Green and Tim 'The Tool Man' Taylor.

One thing I've always thought would be handy to have around would be a little kettle grill sort of thing to use on those days when I wanted to cook something over fire or hot coals but didn't have the ambition to actually go to a state park or something. After all, I've had this bag of charcoal for awhile:


So on my way home from work on a recent Sunday evening, I stopped at my conveniently-located Lewis Drug and picked up this lovely thing:


Ten minutes of shopping time and $15 of tax refund money later, I was on my way.

I sort of regret not thinking of this idea before I was halfway through building the thing, but by the time the thought had occurred to me, I'd already succumbed to the call of my Handy-Dandy Toolkit:


It's amazing what one could get for filling out surveys online. Thanks, Harris Polls! Those were the good old days. I wonder if my account is still active there...? Not like the whole thing hasn't become suspicious by default years ago, right?

But anyway, back to the project at hand. The unboxing and assembly of the lid went very well. After all, just check out how well the lid came out:


That took me all of about three minutes. And with results like that, it was hard to feel anything but confident about. But then it came time to put together the bottom half of the thing:


I know the picture's a little blurry there, but it didn't make much more sense seeing it clearly:


The trick was making this:


happen four times. Not so easy as it might look.

Also something of a daunting task was making two of these:


fit together like this:


putting screws like this:


through these holes:


But I did eventually get it done. At first, I thought it was going to be a bit difficult getting the legs onto the base of the unit:


Wasn't as hard as it looked:


Still, I got kind of excited there, which would explain why the picture's a bit blurry there. That can only mean one thing:


Something's about to get screwed. Not me, of course, but it's amazing what a few quick twists of the wrist can do:


Getting the ash tray and the grates in was easy enough:


The carrying handle took some doing, but wasn't so hard, either:


Which, of course, lead us to this familiar picture:


And with all that done, all that's left is to try 'er out. But that's a story for another time. Until then, there's only one thing I can say:

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