How do you make a smoker

[jeco76]

I just shot 2 wild boars and I want to smoke some of the meat. Does anyone know how to build an easy smoker that will hold a lot of meat and be left unattended for a while?  I was also wondering if the old metal military wall lockers that stand up right would work?

[Red Badger]

they might be a bit thin walled... there was a post here a while back ( a year or so ) that showed plans for one made out of a dryer or something....

[Razor]

Years ago I made one outta an old 'fridge...Had metal innards...
Took the workins' out of the bottom, cut 'bout a 6 inch square hole and built the fire on a tray I slid under from the front.
Drilled rack holes up hi (rebar) ..and the smoke vent holes near the bottom..
when the smoke came out the bottom holes, that meant it was full..(o'smoke, that is)
Worked great.. 

[battman1]

Heres one I made out of 55 gallon drums.Be sure and use food grade drums.The back one is the fire box and the fornt ones are the cooking chamber.Never got to use it.We moved and I didn't have room for it here so I got rid of it.

[voyageur1688]

  While its not a big smoker, you can make one from an old kitchen range/oven. Know a few people who have made em from gas and electric stoves. They are already insulated so they hold temp real well, and you can use the thermostat it has with it to control the temp. Its pretty easy to build this way and you can set it up so it works off whatever the stove used whether it was gas or electricity or gas or whichever you want it to be. The main thing is to get the burner set up in the bottom of the stove and have it so it will heat the oven to your desired temp and to let it do its thing. However I dont recommend leaving it unattended for extended periods as you need to check it so you can make sure you do not run out of smoke in it.
Voy

[Watauga]

A Good Book on building a Smoker and also an Oven and about anything a Woodsman might need is.
WILDWOOD WISDOM by Ellsworth Jaeger.
Its a good one to have!
Also Mountain man Crafts and Skills!

[Elkinde]

I just built a 4x4 ft. wooden box with bars running through the sides for setting the meat racks on, and a hole in the side to run the probe of the meat thermometer through. Indians used hides. Use your imagination to figure out something to contain smoke; and control heat.

[sean drake]

if your not to worried about smoking and just want to cook it you can all ways dig a pit build a fire get a good bed of coals cover them with dirt or a mettle plate  cover your meat with foil burlap banana leaves etc put a nother mettle plate over the meat and cover with dirt walk a way  have never dun it my self so u may  want to do some research but if u want some way of cooking where u do not have to keep going back to it every so often that is the ticket

[monkeywright]

know that this works great I picked up an old gang box  (Chest style) that you see on jobs that was messed up (for free) beat out the sides so that it would close again took out everything from the inside hung in some bars so hang summer sausage and jerky and put an old stove burner in it built a stand that was about 10'' tall to hold the burner then used a old cast iron frying pan to put hard wood saw dust in to get my smoke from the box is 5'x4'x4' the burner runs off of LP gas so holding the temp was never a problem after you get it set. the top has a short stack if about 18'-24' and we burn a small set of 3 holes in the 2 side each hole is about 1.5' and can be closed off with a slide gate all this cost us about 100 $ due to mom getting a new stove  I know that between Dad and 2 brothers as well as myself we have smoked a lot of meat in it ans it still works fine today as it did when we first tried it out

wow now I think I'm going to have go fire it up and do a little smoking