Ideas for a solid diy smoker

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paaco1981

Newbie
Original poster
Feb 8, 2014
21
10
I've been using my mes for a couple years now and also just started using my ecb. I like the ecb a lot but it's a little small to do any real smoking for a crowd. I'm also not rich and live on a budget. Any suggestions for cheaper diy smoker projects? Would love to do something in the yard out of brick or something similar but open to any and all suggestions.
 
The least expensive that I can think of is a used electric range/oven. You can often get them for free or very cheap. Put the word out to friends and relatives and you might get one pretty easily. You can move a burner down from the cooktop to the bottom of the oven and wire it for 120V. This is plenty to cook a chip pan for your smoke. You can wire the oven's bake and broil elements to either 120V or 240V for your heat. You can use the burner control switches to manually set the current or use the oven thermostat to control the temperature. All you need is some tools, like drills, tin snips, etc.
 
you can check out the forums at smokerbuilder.com too for ideas.  It seems like a really popular, cheap alternative is an "ugly drum smoker".  With some scrounging you could probably build one of those pretty simply/cheaply and have two 22" round grates to smoke on.  Or find a cheap/free side firebox smoker and research how to tune it up to work better -- that's another popular approach.
 
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