Just thought you would like to know we roasted our first 2 roasts at about 11pm PDT last night! I found a 14 gauge piece of stainless scrap at a metal shop late yesterday afternoon and made the modifications for a diffusion plate. (attached pic) We seasoned the roaster at about 10 pm, and went straight into 2- 1lb roasts after that! You have an amazing roaster set up, it works so well! Thank you again for all of your attention and help during this process, you have been invaluable to us! We are enclosing a couple pictures, thought you might like to see the initial set up. We will be doing quite a bit of cosmetic fabrication from this point as we are going to take the roaster with us when we get started, and I will send you pictures of those when we get finished with that portion. The grill has turned out to work very well after the modifications to lid (attached pic), it holds temps like a champ, once it gets to temperature we back all the burners to minimum and at times even turn one of the three burners off or open the lid a little to maintain temp. The thermometer you sent with the package sits about 3/4" from the drum, and because the diffusion plate is so big we think it is giving us very accurate readings. (Our times are within seconds of your suggested profiles.)
We panicked a little on the first roast, thinking we had heard second crack, and ended up with a city roast that tastes great! Did a second roast of Colombian and can now clearly identify second crack, it's a full city we will try later today. We still have to get a more efficient temporary cooling set up, but a fan and strainer is working OK for now. Going to experiment with an espresso blend at an Italian roast later today! Once again many thanks, you have far exceeded our expectations!

Hank and Debbie Thomas
Las Vegas Coffee & Roasting Co.

Nice unit.   This is built sturdy and should last forever.    Unfortunately I dropped motor unit while installing and crushed the plastic fan.    I will epoxy it together and see if it runs  without shaking.    You did a wonderful job on the parts no sharp edges and even the drilled holes have no burs.    You must have been a machinist or an engineer or just one talented guy.   I am not used to seeing quality with everything made in china now a days. 

 Thanks,    Brad

 Hi,
 I whole heartily agree! I bought a motor off of Ron and what a difference it makes. the shipping was super fast and all questions were answered promptly. I am really enjoying BBQ roasting!

 July 17,2004   Allen M

I'm an engineer--the drum is a work of art and the motor and mounts are terrific and the whole kit is well thought-out and it makes GREAT COFFEE!  I've done several roasts using your suggested profile for 1lb batches and I'm getting the hang of it!  I will graduate to larger batches when I decide what kind of beans I want to order in quantity.  The only bad thin.g about this setup is that I want to roast all the time and you need lots of beans in your inventory to have all that fun!

Thanks for your great products, and even more for your superb customer service! Keep up the good work