New guy from Saskatchewan

[kuroki]

Greetings everyone.
I've been reading enough posts here while searching recently that I decided to join.
I live on an acreage in beautiful (or is that freezing cold?) Eastern Saskatchewan.
My day job is a machinist, I own a shop that rebuilds heavy equipment parts, rock crushers, and hydraulic pumps and cylinders.
My main hobby for years has been cooking (everything from Chinese to classic french) and that has kept evolving to doing more and more from scratch.
Recently during some downtime we built a wood burning reverse flow smoker out of an old steam boiler shell (and other junk from our scrap pile) that's big and heavy enough we had to move it from the shop to the patio with a payloader. It's currently sitting and waiting for its first test run.

I'm mainly interested in sausage making going forward. I've been reading through a couple of the Marianski books recently and picking up a few pieces of equipment here and there. Haven't really done much yet, a few batches of jerky, and some uncased chorizo. Looking forward to reading and learning from everyone here, and hopefully being able to help someone with the things I do know if it ever comes up

Geoff

 

[tbern]

Hi and welcome to the forum from Minnesota! Your smoker sounds great!! Post up some pictures of it, if you get a chance!

 

[TNJAKE]

Welcome from Tennessee

 

[kuroki]

Here it is right after we moved it (back before it was half buried in snow) during a test burn just to make sure it pulled a draft. The cooking chamber is (if I recall correctly) 22" diameter and roughly 5 feet long. It's 1/2" thick steel. The firebox is an offcuts from the same boiler shell. I had used the calculations I found on this site to size everything, so I'm hopeful it will work well despite the slightly unconventional firebox mounting. That connector pipe is actually the body of a large hydraulic cylinder for lifting the bed on a dump truck. The domed ends of the body are worn down blades off a heavy Wishek breaking disc. The frame is 4" heavy wall square tube that was cut off of a wrecked farm implement, and the stack is 4" sch40 steel pipe leftover from building a shop crane a few years ago.
The door was weighted with a pretty substantial counterweight, so you can open and close it with one finger despite weighing well over 100 pounds.
I do have a few things to do yet. Once I make sure everything works well I am burying the legs to bring it down to a comfortable height. It is 9 feet to the top of the stack for scale. I am also probably going to cut the rain bend off the stack. I'll see how it works first, but I'm not really optimistic it's a good idea due to being directional and having near constant wind here.
I was planning on doing a test run with a couple temp probes and no meat to see if any modifications need to be done before painting.

Next thing will be finding suitable wood. Our choices around here are pretty well limited to birch, cottonwood, white Poplar, a couple willows, green ash, and Manitoba maple. I know birch is suitable but of course that's the only tree on the list I don't have growing on my property.

 

[tbern]

Very cool!

 

[indaswamp]

Ask away....Sausages are right in my wheel house...

 

[Sven Svensson]

Welcome, from California. Very nice work.

 

[four20]

View attachment 652557
Here it is right after we moved it (back before it was half buried in snow) during a test burn just to make sure it pulled a draft. The cooking chamber is (if I recall correctly) 22" diameter and roughly 5 feet long. It's 1/2" thick steel. The firebox is an offcuts from the same boiler shell. I had used the calculations I found on this site to size everything, so I'm hopeful it will work well despite the slightly unconventional firebox mounting. That connector pipe is actually the body of a large hydraulic cylinder for lifting the bed on a dump truck. The domed ends of the body are worn down blades off a heavy Wishek breaking disc. The frame is 4" heavy wall square tube that was cut off of a wrecked farm implement, and the stack is 4" sch40 steel pipe leftover from building a shop crane a few years ago.
The door was weighted with a pretty substantial counterweight, so you can open and close it with one finger despite weighing well over 100 pounds.
I do have a few things to do yet. Once I make sure everything works well I am burying the legs to bring it down to a comfortable height. It is 9 feet to the top of the stack for scale. I am also probably going to cut the rain bend off the stack. I'll see how it works first, but I'm not really optimistic it's a good idea due to being directional and having near constant wind here.
I was planning on doing a test run with a couple temp probes and no meat to see if any modifications need to be done before painting.

Next thing will be finding suitable wood. Our choices around here are pretty well limited to birch, cottonwood, white Poplar, a couple willows, green ash, and Manitoba maple. I know birch is suitable but of course that's the only tree on the list I don't have growing on my property.

It amazing sometimes how the junk lying around can be made into something beautiful and functional. I built a smoker from a subway cabinet... I had an old propane burner from a furnace, and the racks are stainless pan tops I had piles of from buying out closed down kitchens. I drilled a drain hole in each top that cascade down into the pan above the burner. had a stainless box that fit perfectly beside the burner in the bottom for the wood chunks. Hint : Its my avatar for this forum.

 

[kuroki]

Looks like a nice unit to me!

I think the next big project on my list is going to be building a traditional smoke house for cold smoking. I've got a few ideas there...

 

[bauchjw]

Welcome from Virginia!

 

[Bigtank]

Welcome from NW Iowa

 

[DRKsmoking]

welcome from Nova Scotia

Good read on your cool looking smoker, and look forward to your
input and output on the smoker and any of your other cooks and smokes

David

 

[Gonna Smoke]

Welcome to the show! There are a bunch of folks here with a lot of knowledge about everything relating to sausage and jerky not to mention smoking or not smoking anything edible and more than willing to share it...

 

[Buckeyedude]

Welcome aboard! Great job on the smoker! There is a ton of information here, a constant sausage fest if you will..........