# venturi home build help needed



## denmond2000 (Jun 19, 2017)

hi all, first of all what a great informative forum. Im based in Johannesburg, South Africa and love your guys passion and expertise and helpful posts. Based on that, im really looking for help on a small homemade venturi cold smoker i made from all the designs here and on the internet in general. 

so i have a stainless steel hot smoking cabinet bought from commercial supplier, its got 600 litre capacity but the design flaw is that it can only be used as a cold smoker because the drying/heating elements are inside and the smoke igniter is also an element on which you layer  wet wood ships. with all the fiddling of vents etc... the chips always either burn out or flare up. so off i went onto the good old internet and made following venturi (trying to upload pics later today) . Basically stainless steel tin, holds approx 1.5 pounds of wood chips. I hooked up a mini air compressor with adjustable flow valve to the top , in same way venturi set up, ie small tube pumping air, with the small tube running through the larger diameter T piece in order to create the vacuum to pull smoke out the tube & piped into the smoker. I have drilled 2 x 6mm diameter holes under the tube for air flow, and 2 x 6mm holes on the side towards the bottom to ignite wood chips using small flame torch. is this set up correct, as the smoke i get is thick white, and the wood chips can be seen to be red hot and glowing from the 2 x holes i ignite them with , and i reduce the air flow to try get slow but steady stream of smoke being pushed out. i find that after 1 hour, the fire dies and i need to light it again with high air flow to get embers going. i have smoked chorizo & bacon and after 2 x 1 hour smoking sessions of re-igniting, the smoke flavour is a bit strong, not arid but a bit too smokey and catches on back of the throat? any advise on my deign or smoking method anyone can offer?

sorry for long winded explanation but i want to try be as detailed as possible

thanks in advance all!!


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## jonnygranada (Jul 17, 2017)

im not sure how much help i can offer, since i literally just made my first one of these yesterday...lol!  however i can say that it sounds like you may need a little more air flow.  you can do this by one of two methods, shorten the length of the center venturi tube so that is closer to the opening in the fire box, of drill a few more holes to let air in.  I personally shortened the length of my tube to pull the smoke out a little quicker since i can replace the tube as needed versus holes i cant fill back in.  it worked for me, and now i get a nice thinish smoke that smells good and isnt a choking hazard.  Also i noticed that before i did this alteration, my chips  only burned for about 2 hours, when i tried it again yesterday after modifying the tubes, the same amount of chips burned for about 6 hours.


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