Looking for ideas on making a large enough smoker to handle whole filets. What is necessary to get a good smoke going & regulate the temperature & time? It must be able to smoke about eight filets at a time. Has anyone done this out of plywood?

Thanks,

Full Freezer

FF:

Did a little Googling, and came up with this cool site complete with plans and directions.

http://www.mikesell.net/smoker/

Looks like a neat project.

Mike

Find a surplus alluminum or stainless food serving cart that you might see used in a hospital or in a bakery. They are usualy about 2' wide by 2.5' deep and around 5' tall. They seal up nice and are mounted on nice casters for rolling in and out of your garage. Then buy one of those cheap propane turkey frying kits you see at Albertsons, Lowes or GI Joes and Two 2 quart stainless bowls. If your cart didn't come with racks get some old oven racks from some thrift stores and don't use sheet pans to smoke on . Then most important of all find a dial type thermometer or something else you can check the inside temp of the smoker with that dosen't require opening the door and has a range of 120 to 220 degrees. Now drill or cut a hole in the back near the bottom of your cart that is just big enough to run the propane line into the smoker so it can be conected to the cooker. Next drill a small hole near the upper part of the door to stick your thermometer into. After you brine up your fish (4 parts brown sugar 1 part salt a little corse ground pepper heavly coating your fish in a ziploc bag over night will do) rense and lay the salmon on the oven racks and let dry while you load up the two bowls with whatever kind of wet wood chips you like. (i like apple, alder and cherry for salmon) then cover the bowls with foil and punch a few holes in it. light the cooker and set almost as low as posible. once fish is loaded and a bowl of wood is loaded onto the cooker shut the door and bring the temp up to between 145 to 165 F for around 3 to 5 hours swaping out bowls of wood chips when smoke stops leaking out. For the last hour I like to crank up the heat to around 185 to make sure it is ok for my kids to eat. If you are doing a lot of fish and have more than 3 or 4 racks going at once you may want to pick up a small cabnet fan to circulate air inside the smoker and keep temps even top to bottom also a drip pan can make things a lot easyer to clean up.

There is thousands of ways to smoke fish some hotter, more colder, longer, shorter With fancy wet brines simple dry brines some have to have booze, garlic, apple cider,hot peppers and be coated in brown sugar while they cool. Have fun finding out what you like best and practice PracticE PRACTICE.
Be prepared, your going to need to catch a lot of fish for this...

If you contact me I will outline how my dad built a great smoker out of plywood as you asked.

I built a plywood smoker (2) years ago. Holds (8) oven racks and is fired with a (2) brner propane system. Works awsome. P mail me for more details.

four sheet's of T1-11 some two by fours a set of hinges,some nails and an old wood stove with 7' of pipe.Lot's of alder with the bark takin off.Good luck,
STRIKEC ZONE

If you do it *RIGHT*, your fish will start out looking like this........



.......and finish up looking like this.



Here is a picture from the outside.

Sol,
Is that your smoker? If it is I want to see it, and copy it!

What good is an empty smoker, Bucket? You've got to learn how to operate a landing net properly, first. You can't tazer a fish into submission by pointing it at them. And sun glare is no excuse for the gross display of ineptitude you exhibited last Saturday. With a partner like you, no wonder Fuhrer's forum handle is NOFISH.

You didn't think I wasn't going to crusify you, did ya?

Sol,
I will never claim to have your skill's, and I've never in the past tried to net a fish I couldn't see. You claim to do it all the time, so from now on I'll just start throwing the net at em! I can't wait to do that with a fish YOU have on.

You mean REACT............now your getting the idea. Throw the net, whatever, but do something other than stand there for god's sake.

I've got a better idea. I'll get about 10 feet of gillnet you can keep in the back of your boat, and when someone gets a fish on you can just chuck it out upstream of the thing. You'll get em.

I'm just toyin' with ya jimmy. And save your famous "paybacks" speach. I've got a long way to go to ever get even with you. :p

You maybe throwing sticks and having fun at my expense, and its ok cause I'm a big boy now but paybacks are a real bummer dude!!!!

The funny thing, Freezer, is that your nickname here reminds me of a set-up I saw once at a trout lake up in BC:

Find an old refrigerator (or upright freezer). Make a hole in the back and duct out from it to a sealed brick (or some kind of other) firehouse.

This method takes a lot of tending and stoking, but is an awesome way to cold smoke without direct heat. The fridge racks will handle whole fillets or even sides of big fish, and access is as easy as it gets.

Yessss! Keep it comming! How many of you prefer propane or is an adjustable electric element better?? Pro's & con's to either?? How much venting is necessary at the bottom and at the top??

Has any one built a walk-in smoker?

I called around several years ago and ended up with a full size refrigerator with the compressor, etc., removed...

It was an old one, so it had the metal freezer inside the fridge, so I took it out, too.

Then, using angle iron, I added brackets to hold four more shelves, in addition to the two existing shelves inside.

I drilled a few holes in the top, and a one inch hole in the back near the bottom, where I stuck the cord from an adjustable temperature electric frying pan.

Do your favorite brine, slap the fillets on the shelves in the fridge (it holds six to eight entire fish, two or three fillets per shelf, depending on size), fill the frying pan with chips, turn it on, close the door, and you're in business.

At least, that's how I do it.

Fish on...

Todd

Old fridge with metal inside and heavy metal racks good. Older fridge with plastic interior and lighter galvinized metal racks BAD BAD BAD. Wood smookers work great with electrical cookers but it is a little harder to control heat when it gets to be a little cold out and they ocasionly burn to the ground with the heat set to high. A metal box with propane and you can cook a turkey in January if you want. The thought of a walkin brick smokehouse sounds cool...I wonder iuf the Wife would let me nahhhh
I was surprised how little fresh air my propane smoker needed. It only has a couple of 3/8" holes near the bottom that were there when we got it.

couple of thoughts here, I didn't read the whole post to see if any of this was mentioned, but just my personal preferences. I built my smokers ( and several for other people out of 1x6" cedar fence boards. I built my first one and learned from my mistakes. first you build the box however big you want it. I build mine about 4 feet high and 2.5 feet square. this allows wheeled coasters to be used for us suburbanites. then I use a single burner element to fire it up with a damper on the top. I put a thermometer in from the side about 3/4 the way up . I put the element in a pan to catch drips above the element I put a bent piece of steel to deflect the grease away from the burner and into the pan. next I fire up the smoker and allow it to dry out for 10-12 hours several times with jerky or something inside it. during this time the boards will dry out and shrink up to a 1/4 inch. once the boards have shrunk, I cut 1" bats and brad nail them over the spaces. the last smoker I built was so tight the only smoker you saw was when you opened the damper. they work great they look good in cedar and can be rolled into the garage. plus you can build to fit easily available racks. HINT!! go to the county dump they ussually have a appliance recycling program and many of the stoves that are thrown away have stainless steel racks which cost 20-40 dollars at lowes or home depot for FREE. Also my dad always said not to use glue.