BBQ Smoker Conversion

The recent days have brought (relatively) pleasant temps and sunshine. I am of course excited for the upcoming late ice fishing season, but this sunshine also gets me in the mood for some grilling. It is well overdue, but I’ve finally decided to put together my first smoker. Cost is a big issue, so I plan on finding an old cheap oven and converting it to a meat smoker. I’ve heard good things about both the oven and fridge conversion, but I like the idea of adding smoke chips via the sliding bottom drawer in an oven so the oven door itself can remain closed during smoking.

I just wanted to ask for some tips from those who have created their own smoker, or if you know anything about the process. Anything from where to find an old oven for cheap to conversion tips will be greatly appreciated, and I’d love to see pictures of what others have put together. Thanks!

Give this a read.

home made smoker

I would think the heating element the hardest to figure out. Do you have one in mind? Is it adjustable?
My rig is too cheap and not worth copying but I took an old water smoker and put a single hot-plate burner in the bottom. Very crude. I have smoked fish with it 4 times but I’m not sure it will work much more. One of these days I would like a real smoker.

The problem with using a oven is getting the smoke chamber temp low enough. As far as using the bottom, good idea. Take a burner from the top to use as a hot plate. This will work fine for producing smoke. The oven element can be used if you get a controller that will adjust low enough. I think “The sausage maker” has these. Good luck with you smoker.

I wasn’t planning on getting a functioning oven; it’s mainly for the shell with everything else stripped out. My friend has a similar setup with an old fridge. He has a hot plate wired with a dimmer switch, which works very well. We do a lot of cold smoking for our summer sausage, and we can hold the smoker at ~100. I thought I’d wire a hot plate into the bottom drawer and use a similar setup, but who knows how easy heat control will be…

I think the one my uncle and I built was quite unique and works great. He picked up a stainless steel serving cart from a retirement/care facility that closed. It is about 5′ tall, 30″ deep, and about 4′ wide. It has doors on both sides with top to bottom racks. For anyone who has spent any time in a hospital, its the serving cart they store & keep dinner plates in.

We made a stand for it, and parked a small pot belly stove next to it. The stack from the stove enters the bottom left side and exits the top right of the cart. There is a damper for air intake on the stove, a damper entering to the rack, and one on the exist stack. After some trial and error, we found that we needed to make a diverter plate at the bottom of the rack to push the heat/smoke down into the bottom right corner. We have three thermostats drilled/mounted into to cart to get the incoming/outgoing, and central temp. After few more trial and errors, we found the digital temps with the braided stainless cords to work the best. We can do more than one adult deer at a time. More of a comercial size, but when its free parts, who complains.

are you wanting an electric/gas smoker?

if you want charcoal go with one of these:

http://www.thepickledpig.com/forums/general-bbq-grilling/832-our-uds-cooker-how-build-one-part-1-a.html

a UDS is super cheap to build and will run at 225-250 without touching it for hours

you can build them with 50 bucks worht of parts.