Dual file cabinet cold smoker. Questions.

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rob989_69

Meat Mopper
Original poster
Jun 24, 2008
160
10
Rochester NY
Ok, I'm hoping to get some pics here soon. But I just finished this build. I have a 5 drawer, fire proof file cabinet as the main cook box. I have a cheap, $30 walmart special as the fire box. I used a side burner from an old grill as my heat source and cast iron plate to hold the chunks.

Everything works fine. But I've run into some small roadblocks.

1. I really would like to sanitize the main cabinet as much as possible. And keep it that way. Problem is, there's no heat source in that part of the cooker so nothing to really burn it out with. The only thing I could do is buy some wood and get a small fire in there to clean it out. Any suggestions?? Both to clean it now and keep it clean moving forward?

2. And this is the biggest problem I'm having at the moment. The small cabinet is loosing way to much smoke. It's thin and flimsy by design, I actually want to loose as much heat as possible so it doesn't transfer to the main cabinet. But I'm loosing a ton of smoke mainly around the top door and at the back where there are some openings. Is it easier to just fill it with high temp caulk or possibly a tin plate of some sort? The top door is mainly for show, there will be no cooking done in there at all. My goal is to get a good 90% of the smoke into the cooking cabinet. 

I'll get some pictures soon. I have a few other tweaks I need to make but I wanted to get it running this weekend. I have some bacon that's just about done curing that I hope to use to take this on it's maiden voyage.
 
Here's some pics it's actually not doing too bad, still loosing alot of smoke around the door area.

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Very outside the box.  I would recommend duct taping where the vent tube joins the cabinets.  that will keep the smoke from escaping.    You may also want to add 3 or 4 pieces of wood to the smoke box to get a thick smoke going.  Then see where the smoke is escaping. 

Great start.  The walls of those cabinets are pretty thin, so if you are planning on smoking on a cold day, you may want to wrap it in blankets.
 
Thanks for the posts. I've tweaked it a bit since the pics and took it on it's inaugural run yesterday with some pork belly. Sorry no pics, wife had the camera.

I used some heat resistant caulk and high temp paint to seal the door and the area around the stack. Made a big difference. I got good smoke through the cook cabinet for a solid 6 hours. Only problem really is that I went through half a large bag of chunks. But got good smoke penetration and almost no heat to the cook chamber which is exactly what I was looking for.

i have a few more tweaks to make but all in all I'm happy with it.
 
I used 1" foam insulation board all over my file cabinet smoker using duck tape to seal and hinges for a door on the front. this sealed the smoker pretty well. hope this helps
 
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