You can use barbecue sauce while cooking and it will not burn or blacken if your temperature is low. The sugar in the barbecue sauce is what makes the barbecue blacken or burn while on the grill. Basically when the heat gets above about 300 degrees, the sugar in the barbecue sauce begins to dry out and burn. That is what makes it black. Just keep your heat down and keep it moist.
Baste the BBQ sauce on regularly and the real wood smoke will add flavor to the sauce as well as the meat you are smoking. The continuous basting will also establish a nice coating of barbecue sauce on the meat. Make sure you keep an eye on the meat as it is being smoked or barbecued. As the sauce begins to dry out baste it again. Each time allow the sauce to begin to dry out before basting. This will permit the coating to build and give the smoke from the wood a chance to soak into each layer of barbecue sauce before another one is applied. Just let your SmokePistol™ blow a small but continuous stream of smoke into the smoker or BBQ grill while the meat is being coated with your favorite barbecue sauce.