Design from the Ground Up: Sunny Moberg Turns Propane Tanks into BBQ Smokers

Sunny Moberg loves making things by hand. Images courtesy of Moberg.

Meat, smoke, love—Sunny Moberg’s got BBQ and welding in his bones. He was born into a Texas BBQ family—they started Smokey Denmark Smoked Meats Company in Austin—and designs some of the most coveted smokers in the biz. “They’re all handmade,” says Moberg. “We put love in them.”

These days, Moberg and his two-person crew average one smoker build per week. They’re shipped to local joints with names like Panther City BBQ, Corkscrew, and Tejas Chocolate + Barbecue, and they even make their way up north (New York City) or way north (Norway). Moberg has come a ways from his first smoker attempt when he tried to turn an old hot water heater into one at age 18.

Though Moberg wouldn’t call himself a designer, per se, the design community can still benefit from taking a tour of his mind. Moberg’s thinking is representative of design solutions emerging from the real world, rather than solely the project floor. (“We, as designers, have to be more open to what's being hacked, more aware of the world beyond our own domains and always on the look-out for insight and new ways of doing things,” Fjord Design Lead Nick de la Mare recently told us.) Some of the best solutions right now come from the ground up. Here, Moberg shares how he connected two seemingly disparate things (propane and fire), his exacting process where anything off by more than ⅛ inch must be redone, and why it feels so good to make something by hand.

Deep in Texas, Sunny Moberg reimagines propanes tanks as BBQ smokers by designing from the ground up.

What led you to look at a propane tank and think, That would be great to light on fire?

Old farmers here in Texas have been using propane tanks for smokers for decades. I started using propane tanks because my neighbor for 25 years owns a propane company. So I got tanks from him, mostly new tanks that came in damaged and were out of commission. 

Propane tanks are bigger and cheaper than your average pipe and, as a welder, it’s nice that the vessel already has the end caps on it. You don't have to cut a circle, and then weld all the way around on both ends. The shape is a benefit from the get-go. 

My neighbor always told me to be careful because propane can get pressurized in metal pores. I don’t know if he was just trying to scare a youngster, but it works—you obviously don’t want to blow yourself up! Most of our tanks come with the valves off already, so the propane turns from liquid to vapor and it doesn’t take long for the vapor to evaporate on its own. 

The design revolves around heat. Why? 

The smoke travels with the heat and you want it to be pretty smooth from point A (entry) to point B (exit). If you put these abrupt angles and these weird collectors, which is what a lot of our competition builds, it’s not a well-thought-out design. 

There's a balance because you can have too much airflow. We call it draw, and the draw over your meat creates a convectional cook, just like your oven. The convectional cook in our units is very strong and that convectional draw across the meat gives you what everyone wants, that Texas bark, as it's called. The meat has a little resistance, a little crunch.

What impact do your design choices have on the BBQ process? 

It speeds up the pitmaster’s process. On big proteins, say 12 to 14 pounds, we can shrink your cook by about 30 to 40 minutes. If you do that two times a day on two cooks, we can add an hour to a pitmaster’s day. When that pit is full, it can’t cook anything else. But if it can rotate an hour quicker, two times a day, that speeds things up. Time is money on the pit.

“I'm part German, part Swedish and I just love to build.”

What kind of design standards do you hold yourselves to?

Whether we are building a small rig or a 1,000-gallon, 16-feet-long smoker, our error tolerance is ⅛ inch. If we have something that is off by more than ⅛ inch, we stop, cut it, grind it, and fix it before it hits the paint booth and heads out the door. Not many people design a product that people set on fire every day, so we’ve got to be dead on. 

With only two full-time employees, how do you build your smokers so quickly? 

We build two smokers at a time. It’s strange how we can build two at a time almost as fast as we build one. It’s double the work, but it does not take double the time. We learned this when we were in our smaller shop. One time we had to squeeze two smokers together because we were in a bind for time. We realized that a 500-gallon took us about 3.5 days to build by itself. When we did two, it took four days. So we now build two simultaneously.

You sound like a guy who loves working with your hands. Where does that come from?

I'm part German, part Swedish and I just love to build. My grandpa had Smokey Denmark Sausage Company here in Austin—German, you know, you’ve got to make sausage. My passion comes from my grandfather, but I didn’t have a passion to make sausage or cook brisket.

I do have a passion to build smokers. It’s cool to use your hands to put this machine together, then let the pitmaster work on it. If you give a great tool to a great craftsman, the product is only going to get better.

“Not many people design a product that people set on fire every day, so we’ve got to be dead on.”

What’s the key to making something you’re proud of?

I really love seeing the customer smile when they show up to get their smoker. 

When did you discover your passion for welding? 

I fell in love with welding at age 10. My dad bought my brother and me a Go-Kart and he realized real quick we were probably gonna kill ourselves because we were doing Dukes of Hazzard type of stuff. My dad had his cousin weld up this roll cage for us one summer weekend, and I fell in love with welding right there. I thought it was incredible how you could have these two pieces of metal become one within seconds. 

When I turned 15 I asked my dad for a welder for Christmas, and he got me one. There was no internet, so I went to the library and read all the books I could on welding. It’s hard to learn welding in a book. I needed to be hands on, to do trial and error—lots and lots of error. When I graduated from high school, I went the high tech route and worked at an auto company, but I just wanted to go back to welding. I wanted to build smokers full-time. 

On a meal-related note, what is your go-to order?

A good slice of brisket with a little bit of onion and pepper on white bread, no sauce. That’s  hard to beat.

If you’d like to read more from The Creative Factor, check out Morten Bonde’s story about working as a LEGO Art Director while losing his sight and how Planned Parenthood Senior Creative Director Elizabeth Bawol designs to advance the organization’s mission.