Smoker build

[B_HOSS]

I love smoking food lately I’ve been doing it more than smithing. Naturally I like building things so I made a smoker called an Ugly Drum Smoker. I started with a food grade 55 gallon drum burned all the paint off of it and cut 2 1-1/2 inch air intake holes in the bottom. I made an expanded metal charcoal/wood basket and I put in a heat diffuser (out of an old pizza pan) and a grill grate. The thing works great. Here’s a few pictures of it and some products from it. Anyone else smoke food on here?

[Frosty]

Showing blacksmiths food without offering a taste is poor etiquette! Old refrigerators are or were pretty much the norm for smokers here. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[B_HOSS]

Anyone is more than welcome anytime I smoke some food. My food is good I'm not sure it is justifiable for a trip from Alaska though. I've been looking for an old fridge around here for my next build. I found one on the side of a mountain someone dumped (a long time ago) but it was to far gone to bring it back. 

[ThomasPowers]

My pastor is a big smoker fan; I'm trying to remember how many hundreds of pounds of Brisket he smoked for our church's "Country Fair"---they sold out!

Now I am trying to convince him to build a smoker from the 14' long propane tank I was given...

[B_HOSS]

14' TANK!! That would be awesome! It'd be quite the undertaking.

[ThomasPowers]

My rough thoughts would be to cut it in two and put the firebox in the middle and run it in two sections with seperate controls so you could run one low and slow and the other hotter/faster; but I'll talk with some experts to get their views on it.  TX is not low on smoker crews!

[B_HOSS]

Thomas that sounds like an awesome build. Very challenging and way above my skill level. It would be awesome to see it completed though. 

[Frosty]

Unfortunately since the crack down in releasing freon into the atmosphere, even though refrigerators don't use freon anymore, you have to wear out your own frige. You see lots of combo BBQ smokers as well as home builds. A LOT of folk in the bush smoke meat, fish and all sorts of stuff. 

If you get up this way stop by, you don't HAVE to bring something from the smoker but we won't sic the dogs on you if you do. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Les L]

 

Thomas, Here's a picture of a reverse draft I built. There's a plate welded inside from the firebox to the opposite end, with a small opening for the smoke to come to the top and back over the meat. Great for low and slow cooking.

[B_HOSS]

Les that's an awesome looking smoker! Reverse flow at that. I'm very jealous.

[ThomasPowers]

I have a friend in central Ohio who built a lot of smokers from home heating oil tanks; both the cylindrical and the "ovalish"; as I was a scrounger I'd let him know whenever I found one in an "unauthorized dump site"   fairly common as farmland was converted to housing developments and natural gas was plumbed to existing houses.  (I'm sort of an "enabler" as I can find stuff faster than I can use it...hence the 14' long propane tank...)

[John in Oly, WA]

B_Hoss, that looks like quite a feast of BBQ. Nothing like smoking and BBQing for yourself. Beats nearly anything you can get from a restaurant. Of course I say that from a Washington state point of view. Now if I lived in Texas, there'd be a bunch of great BBQ joints I'd have to try.

Being in Washington, I smoke a lot of salmon. Also BBQ pork butts and ribs and the occasional brisket. For smoking, I use an old freezer I converted. For BBQing, I use Weber Smokey Mountain cookers. Just BBQed a couple of pork butts, some racks of ribs and a brisket for my Mom's birthday weekend before last. Tasty stuff!

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Great I wasn't hungry until reading this. Now I'm going to raid the fridge...sigh.