The Ducane Products company started out as Ducane Brothers Metal Fabricating in 1946. The company moved three years later to Little Ferry, New Jersey, where they started making and selling warm air furnaces. They changed the name to the Ducane Company in 1968 and moved the base of operations to Barnwell, South Carolina. By 1975, after deciding that grills were starting to go downhill in design and quality, they started making their own line of Ducane Gas Grills.
- Ducane replacement gas grill burners
- Ducane barbeque cooking grates
- Ducane repair parts
- Ducane Briquette tray, heat shield
A Ducane showing off its grates from the new models made by Weber
For thirty years, this company grew to be one of the highest quality and most popular grill brands in the United States. Their facility was state of the art, their grills made from the finest materials and considered superior in weather resistant materials. They only used the highest quality stainless steel, die cast aluminum and had a baked enamel finish. Each and every one of their gas grills were designed to stand up to the harshest weather conditions, and deal with the best barbeque recipes and flavor.
While most companies use stainless steel parts for their gas grills, Ducane used high quality stainless steel made in the U.S. Other countries, such as China, where many manufacturers get their products from, don’t produce the type of quality stainless useful outdoors for many years of grilling. Even though these grills may be cheaper, their low quality makes the grills less durable, won’t last the tests of time and their usefulness with grilling is diminished. Ducane only used only 304 stainless steel in all their stainless steel grill components. They also used a cast aluminum hood and firebox. While this material isn’t as nice looking, it often lasts longer than 304 stainless steel.
Duncane always used a double layer stainless steel tray for the briquettes that not only supported briquettes for conducting more heat at the grilling surface the briquette tray also acted like a heat shield with its offset openings distributing even heat. These were designed to offset the columns that supported the briquettes, and moved heat better through the box for a more even heat distribution. Between the radiant heat and better distribution, an original Ducane gas grill stood out as a better heating and faster cooking grill than products that were on the market at this time.
Ducane briquette tray was double layered and offset for heat distributions and added heat for grilling on the original ducane grill parts
Ducane did make an older line of grills which was improved upon to create the legendary barbecue grills that made Ducane so popular. They were the innovators for many of the parts that you see in other grills today like the warming racks which control the position of the food keeping it away from the actual cooking surface, yet still maintaining your items at hot temperatures. The original Ducane cooking surface was wider than any other barbecue on the market and shaped convex at the surface to maximize searing temperature to seal moisture in grilled food. Flavor is better when grills are designed to use barbecuing heat for searing the food not collecting dry heat trapped in the hood of the unit and overcooking the food with hot air.
Ducane original gas grill cooking grates were made for searing in moisture while distributing heat.
One of the biggest problems that many grills have is that the only way to check the temperature would be to open the hood; any heat that had accumulated would instantly be sucked out and if you were cooking a whole chicken or slow cooking some potatoes this would often mean longer cooking times. In order to solve this problem, Ducane gas grills came with a lid thermometer to keep a constant watch over how hot the inside is. While these may need to be replaced, they are very useful and convenient. Not exactly an amazing development today but barbeque grills dod not always come with thermometers in the hood.
Another ground breaking innovation for the Ducane Gas Grill was the gas rotisserie back burner. These burners created a blue flame just below a series of stainless louvers, forcing the heat directly towards the rotisserie spit rod. While many products today incorporate an infrared burner for the back burner Ducane was the first to come out with this design.
As time wore on, many manufacturers continued making poorer quality products, using materials of poor quality that sold cheaper. Unfortunately for the Ducane family company many Americans were (are) buying cheap barbecues of poor design and inferior quality. Ducane didn’t sell $5000. grills but they were not $100. barbecues either. The Ducane family BBQ grills existed in between the very cheap and the very expensive gas grills. The company went bankrupt several years ago and was bought out by Weber in 2000. While you can still buy the Ducane brand name, the new Ducane gas barbecues are imported from overseas like so many other barbeque grills today and are not as high of quality as the previous models. The Ducane grills owned from the original manufacturing by the Ducane family are still in use and replacement burners, cooking grates, heat shields, ignitors and briquette trays are still available for repairs.
A new ducane barbeque grill made by weber in 2010
While the Ducane gas BBQ grill tagline of “Buy Your Last Grill First” may not mean the barbecues will last forever, they are still grilling having outlived the parent company.
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Looking for stainless steel wire racks for built in bar-b-que built in 1979. Looking for size 16 in wide x 22 inches long…Also tray for Lava rocks size 17 long by 9 or 10 wide….
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