Photo 3: The fan continues to move the smoke around the smokehouse, not allowing it to settle and cause uneven coloring.Īll the hides I’ve seen come out of smoke houses have been really lightly smoked and uneven. Photo 2: The fan quickly forces the smoke up into the smoker. The hide on the left has already been smoked quite a bit.
The hides are hung from hog rings on threaded rods, so the hides will stay spread open. Photo 1: The fan is located in the box at the bottom center of the smoker, right where the stove pipe enters. The following photos of the interior of Mac’s smokebox, were shot one after another and show how the fan really helps move the smoke into and around the smoke box. Did I mention making jerky at the same time?!! Another advantage is that you can smoke odd sizes and re-smoke previously made articles. One down side is the time it takes to smoke (two days average) but the process is less time consuming than smoking one or two at a time, especially when you keep it going all the time and remove hides from it as they reach the desired color and replace them with fresh unsmoked ones. We are going to add a few nuts spaced along the rods to stop any slide that may occur with handling the hides while smoking. The threaded rod provides a rough surface for the rings and the hides don’t slide to the center. The hides are hung by using open ‘hog rings’. The box has 10 lengths of ¼” threaded rod mounted on the top. Without the fan, the smoke settles on the hides at any folds and at the tops. It aids in maintaining a draft for the firebox. The fan is very important! It pulls smoke from the firebox and circulates it among the hides…ever so gently…not a tornadic blow. The first fan was on a rheostat but the new one is wired straight to the power. Now we use a small fan mounted inside the box over the smoke inlet. We had an in-line fan in the pipe but it died due to creosote buildup. The box is raised allowing the pipe to go straight to the box and then elbowed up and enters the box in the bottom center. The firebox is an old cast iron stove located about 10″ feet away and an 8″ pipe connecting it to the box. Ours is built of ½” plywood with 2×4 framing.
Brain tanning hides by mattew richards mac#
Text provided by Mac Maness, Richard, Rod & Jane
0 kommentar(er)
