Puffing Billy

When it comes to smoking and curing at Pool Cottage, the one thing we lacked was a good old hot smoker. Since we now work with "Smoked" a low and slow BBQ outfit, it was time to right this wrong. Ben, our Son lent us a Weber hot smoker and we had some great success with it, but being Pool Cottage, we wanted something more bespoke, more traditional, more home-made and more, well, us!

The Weber Hot Smoker

After much research and fag packet calculations, we settled on a reverse flow design, which would provide heat both under and across the cooking chamber, this giving a better heat distribution and flow of smoke. All we needed was the materials and skills to build such a beast. From the materials perspective we wanted to build the smoker from scrap metal, in true "up-cycling" style. thus both the heat and cooking chambers would use old gas bottles, mounted on a scrap angle iron frame and would have a chimney fashioned from a length of 3" pipe, salvaged from our friend Edgar's metal pile!

We now had the job of putting it all together and since neither of us could weld and we didn't own a welder, this was a bit of an issue. How hard could it be? An Arc welder was purchased and much practice glueing bits of scrap together ensued. The results weren't pretty but the basics were in place ready to make our smoker.

The first part to be made was the heat chamber, using a 13 kg butane bottle. A door was cut out and hinges, handle and latch welded together.

The Heat Chamber

Work then began on the main cooking chamber and the two were joined to form the basis of the smoker.

The 2 Chambers Come Together

More work was done to create the reverse flow system using a baffle plate inside the cooking chamber. The chimney was then fitted complete with a smoke damper system.

The smoker was then mounted on a wooden frame via angle-iron supports. A heat shield and serving platform were added (these used to be part of Nelly's original floor)! The result...... Puffing Billy.