Update: my offset smoker went from ash tray to best brisket I've ever made in 4 months
Back in March I bought a used offset off a guy in Waco and my first cook was so bad my neighbor asked if I was burning trash. The firebox door had a quarter inch gap, so I sealed it with stove gasket and high heat silicone, then spent maybe 6 cooks just learning to run a clean fire instead of choking it down. By July the same cooker turned out a 14 pound packer with a bark my father in law actually complimented, which never happens. Was it the gasket, the fire management, or just getting reps? Curious what fix made the biggest jump for you all.
Learned this same lesson the hard way when I rebuilt the door on my old Oklahoma Joe. Sealed every gap with gasket tape and felt like a genius until my next cook, where the fire still ran dirty because I was cutting the intake down to nothing and smothering it. Honestly the gasket mattered less than I wanted to believe, because the real fix was feeding it a small hot fire and letting the stack pull air through instead of fighting it. Six or seven cooks later something just clicked in my hands, like I could feel when the coal bed was right without staring at the thermometer every two minutes. Your father in law compliment is the real trophy here, those guys don't hand those out easy.