The tools needed are shop standard, and listed below
- Circular Saw w/Tin Cutting blade
- Drill
- 2 (two) 1/8th" Steel Drillbits (one will break, I broke two)
- Rivet Gun
- Measuring Tape
- Marker (any colour, I used Black)
- Tin Snips (Optional, I never used mine...)
I saved all the Tin from the roof of a small barn I took down years ago, for various odd jobs around the farm. This particular shade of garish green was too hideous even for the roof of our hunt camp. Knowing that both smoke and spray paint will eventually have their way with this project I didn't care.
I opted to cut back the bent & ragged edges of 4
(four) of the straightest sheets I had on hand to 64". Just
looking at the available metal I have, it's likely that all
subsequent smokers will be rather shorter. I found that using a
black marker on the metal the best for following a straight line
with all the sparks a' flying.
The tin sheeting used has a handy semi-circular interlock on each
side that allowed for easy construction, as the sheets obviously
had to meet at a right angle. Squaring the ends made for an
effortless fit.
Each corner is drilled and riveted in 3 (three) spots, I opted
for top, middle & bottom, and am well pleased with the
results.)
Although the basic structure looks very flimsy, I knew that I'd be able to count on the rack mounts to offer some stability. The rack mounting material was recovered from an aluminum frame that once housed an inefficient Glass Sliding door that kept our kitchen cold for over 20 winters. (I hope to make a passive solar collector with the plate glass left from the doors)
The bracketing material was obviously drilled and riveted into place, forming a ledge onto which the top & Bottom could be riveted and the racking could be placed. The closing or front panel was slid into place with a piece of softwood and light hammer, as the Tin bends and dents easily under blunt trama force.
The top & bottom were cut from a fifth sheet of tin, as closely to the edges of the frame as possible, and as square as possible. The squared ends, once riveted, left the outlining and cutting of the front panel for a single 1000watt burner and the placement of racking. The racking could be from a discarded fridge (an old fridge makes all this a fools errand as it is the defacto standard Backyard Smoker). As I have no old fridge I cut up some racking that was not shiny enough for a local convenience store, but seemed fine to me. This same racking has been used for a large Stone BBQ/Fire pit grill at the Hunt Camp.
Currently the door is a single sheet that is hinged at the top, with a handle in the middle and bottom. The sheet is flexible enough to tuck it in the front and seal the smoker. The first modification will be to seperate the meat compartment from the burner access with two doors. Secondly, I think that I will experiment with digital Min/Max indoor/outdoor Thermometers, to achieve more control over the consistency of product. By mounting the sensor in the upper compartment, the temperature can be better regulated.
I opted to paint the outside Black, though it should be noted to never paint the inside of a smoker. The sheeting material that I used has a finished white surface that appears to have weathered 20 or more years of temperature extremes. I ran the burner for an hour with the cover closed to see if there was any smell or blistering of the paint. Both proved negative, so I set about preparing some wood for smoking. The wood samples shown below are Apple, Maple and Cedar respectively from left to right. I've used both the maple & apple woods with very satisfactory results. The cedar will be used to experiment with a prize salmon, from Britsh Columbia.
I've found that chopping the wood down to chips with a hatchet is both labourious and tedious work, while 10 minutes with a circular saw cutting laterally along the grain, rather than across yields a day's supply of smudge fodder. The apple wood was specifically used to smoke two prize hams that were under-cured but impossible to ruin through ignorance due to thier superior quality of the meat. The maple was used recently to smoke about 5 lbs of strip pork, re-actions are understandably mixed as I substituted raw maple sugar in place of sugar for the brine.
The 1000 Watt electric element is both the heart and achilles heel of the project. The high power requirement poses no grief provided the grid is at hand, though the draw becomes excessive when equated to the capabilities of an entry level solar system.
A revised version is planned with a wood fired smudge and draft controlled smoke re-circulating stack. The details are not on screen yet.
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