Hey all, I've been visiting this site for some time, but this is my first time posting something. I just completed retrofitting an old server cabinet into a smoker. When I was sketching out the plans, I saw a similar design already posted here from a while ago, but I hope that you can look this over and give me your thoughts.
First off, thanks for checking out this post. I have been making beef jerky on a Char-grill smoker for around a year now, and it has become very popular with my friends and even my coworkers. I find myself making 50 lbs of flank steak into jerky at a time, and to smoke that much meat sliced into strips the size of bacon takes me around 4 hour per 6 lbs of raw meat. It goes through a ton of charcoal and wood and is very labor intensive to keep the temperature right so it doesnt actually cook the meat instead of drying it out.
I've been toying with a lot of custom ideas on a homemade smoker, and when a buddy of mine located a computer surplus warehouse for another project he was working on, I realized that the steel cabinet that is used for a server would be a great idea. I sketched out a plan and did some research here and on other sites, and hopefully you will all be proud of the build.
I'll post the highlights below (photos and give a little background), but I also have literally every last step detailed on a blog I've been keeping that my coworkers read each morning (http://www.ssiegel.com)
-Scott
First off, thanks for checking out this post. I have been making beef jerky on a Char-grill smoker for around a year now, and it has become very popular with my friends and even my coworkers. I find myself making 50 lbs of flank steak into jerky at a time, and to smoke that much meat sliced into strips the size of bacon takes me around 4 hour per 6 lbs of raw meat. It goes through a ton of charcoal and wood and is very labor intensive to keep the temperature right so it doesnt actually cook the meat instead of drying it out.
I've been toying with a lot of custom ideas on a homemade smoker, and when a buddy of mine located a computer surplus warehouse for another project he was working on, I realized that the steel cabinet that is used for a server would be a great idea. I sketched out a plan and did some research here and on other sites, and hopefully you will all be proud of the build.
I'll post the highlights below (photos and give a little background), but I also have literally every last step detailed on a blog I've been keeping that my coworkers read each morning (http://www.ssiegel.com)
-Scott
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