Kamado felt replacement – How and what! All the steps!

Kamado felt replacement – How and what! All the steps!

Regular maintenance of your kamado includes replacing the felt of your kamado once in a while. Due to heat, opening and closing, food particles and other things of wear or contamination, it is a good idea to replace it about every year with regular felt and every 2.5-3 years with Fiberglass Felt/Infinity Gasket. Replacing your Kamado felt will make your Kamado more airtight again, thus it draws less false air and less heat escapes as well. This, in turn, will keep your temperature more stable and thus make your dish look better! At Kamado-essentials.com, the preferred choice is Glassfibre felt. This durable felt provides a better seal than regular felt, lasts longer because it is more wear-resistant and is also easier to clean so any food residue is easier to brush off. Below we explain how to replace your kamado felt. It sounds like quite an undertaking, however, hopefully with this explanation it is not too bad!

Supplies:

• Fiberglass kamado felt
• Putty knife
• Acetone/nail polish remover
• Scouring sponge
• Dry cloth
• Sharp scissors
• Cloth(s) to place your kamado parts on

Optional but recommended;

• Tools to unscrew your dome from your base (Usually socket wrench 10)

The most important thing to say at the beginning is: be careful with the putty knife! Your Kamado is tremendously robust but with the putty knife, unfortunately, you can still scratch it or worse. So use it only on the flat part under your felt and here on the glazed parts!

Disconnecting your dome is optional, however, when you want to replace the felt of the dome it really is much nicer to work with it loose and lying with the felt can up. Always try to do this with two people though and before removing the felt! One person can hold the dome and the other can then loosen it. Make sure your dome is in the position that there is the least tension on the rear compression springs, usually this is in the open position.

After this, you can unscrew it and carefully remove it from the base. In the example below, I laid down my fire ring from my kamado with old cloths on it and then laid the dome on top of this (watch your thermometer when you lay it down). This makes the dome very stable and allows you to work well on it.

Start by removing the old felt. You can make a small start in this with the putty knife so you can lift it a little bit. Then you can pull it off fairly easily by hand.

After removing the felt, you will find that a lot of sticky residue remains.

Use your putty knife to remove the last coarse residue. Do be careful with the putty knife near your glazed ceramics.

After removing the coarse residue, it’s time for the finer residue. To do this, use the scouring pad with a small amount of acetone/nail polish remover each time. The abrasive sponge will not react very well to the acetone but try as much as possible with the sanding part to sand away the last remnants until you are left with a nice even round.

After this, you can use a dry cloth to give the edges a good polish so that all residual acetone is gone.

Then the pasting begins, you will notice that it does not paste perfectly right away, this gives you the opportunity to correct any mistakes. Later when “baking in,” the bonding will become complete.

It is important that eventually the end/end of the base and dome end up next to each other and not on top of each other. See the example below;

Start at the end by removing the staple, then you can expose the adhesive strip a bit. Keep the piece of black tape on the end on for a while.

After this you can start pasting the first piece, remember to start slightly off center. Remove the protective tape from the adhesive edge piece by piece, and stick a piece on every 1-2 cm each time.

Make sure you stay well centered on the edge, should the seal be slightly wider than the edge of your Kamado the preference is that it overhangs a little further on the outside of the kamado than on the inside. Complete the entire round and when you get back to the beginning try to get as close to the beginning as possible, then cut it off.

Once you have cut the remaining piece you can use the included pieces of tape to tape the ends together. Try to stick and wrap both sides together well. Do not wrap this tape all the way around, however, try to make the adhesive strip of the felt still stick to the kamado.

After this you have finished the first ring and can move on to the second and, if desired, your daisy wheel!

The final step of placing the felt is to bake in the adhesion, make sure the felt is snug everywhere and then light your Kamado. Let it gently rise to about 200 degrees and then close your sliders and let it cool slowly. After this, you are done and can enjoy your improved airtightness and more stable temperature!

Tags: Kamado, Kamado felt, Kamado felt replacement, Infinity Gasket, Glassfibre felt, Fiberglass Felt