Building your own smoker is a great project for any pitmasters who enjoy DIY and want the satisfaction of knowing they didn’t just cook the food, they built the smoker it was cooked in!
The first thing you need to do before you get to work is to decide what kind of smoker you are planning to build.
To help you get started, we’ve put together this list of 9 DIY smoker builds.
There’s a variety of different types of homemade smoker. To help you narrow it down we’ve included what tools you’ll need and links to where you can find step by step guides to the building process.
Lets get started.
1) Build your own ugly drum smoker
The ugly drum smoker is about as basic and easy to build as it gets. The plan here is to turn a 55-gallon food-grade drum into a smoker in just a few hours, with minimal work and no welding.
The first thing you need to do is source your drum. You can pick up a brand new 55-gallon drum for around $150 or a used one for approximately $20.
When you are buying your drum, make sure it hasn’t been treated with an epoxy coating to prevent rust. The epoxy will not react well to being heated up, and the last thing you want is to be smoking your meat in toxic fumes.
Once you’ve got your drum, you’ll need to scrub it down and then buff the insides with fine sandpaper. The rest of the build is as simple as attaching four air intakes using readily available plumbing supplies, building a fire basket from expanded metal mesh, and attaching a handle to the lid.
Once you’ve sourced your parts and tools, you can have your DIY ugly drum smoker built in an afternoon, and, best of all, you won’t need to weld anything.
If you like the idea of an ugly drum smoker but don’t have space or the tools needed to assemble one yourself, the PitBarrel Cooker Company’s 18.5″ Classic Pit Barrel Cooker makes a great ready-to-use alternative.
Basic materials needed
- 55-gallon epoxy-free food-grade drum with lid
- 4x 24-inch-long ¾-inch threaded pipe
- ¾-inch threaded 90-degree elbow joints
- 12 x 48 – inch piece of expanded metal mesh
- Fine sandpaper
- Various fittings (see step-by-step guide)
You might find it more convenient to order a DIY Drum Smoker Kit like this one from Big Popp Smokers.
Tools needed
- Angle grinder
- Drill
- Vise
- Wrench
- Cutting table
Skills required
- Angle grinding
- Sanding
Step-by-step guide
Head over to popularmechanics.com for a full breakdown of this build, including an exhaustive list of all the parts you’ll need, and check out howtobbqright.com for free PDF format CADD plans for your ugly drum smoker.
We also have a guide to the best drum smokers you can buy if DIY isn’t your thing.
2) DIY flowerpot smoker
If you’ve got a sudden craving for smoked meat but don’t have a smoker, don’t panic. You’re only one quick trip to your local garden center away from making your own out of a pair of clay flower pots.
Yup, you heard right.
The first thing you’ll need to do is drill airflow holes in your clay planters. To do this without cracking your pot, start with a smaller drill bit and work up to the right size.
To control the airflow in your pot, shave down a couple of wine corks so that they’ll fit in the air holes.
One of your clay pots is going to act as the charcoal holder. Place a brick in the bottom of that pot and put a small BBQ grate on top of the brick to hold the coals.
Your top pot will be what holds in the smoke. Both pots are going to get quite hot, so it’s best to fit the top pot with a handle through the simple method of drilling two holes in the bottom and installing a standard U-bolt.
Once the drilling and cork shaving is done, you are ready to go. If you have access to a roll of BBQ gasket tape, you can use that to create a better seal between the pots, but it’s not the end of the world if you don’t.
Put your started coals on the grate in the bottom of the pot and add the soaked wood chips. Place your food above it on a basic circular BBQ grill grate and pop the top pot on top to seal it.
Job done!
Basic materials needed
- Two clay flower planters
- BBQ gasket
- U-Bolt (with nuts & washers)
- Wine corks
- Circular grill grate
- Small BBQ charcoal grate
Tools required
- Drill
Skills required
- Drilling
Step-by-step guide
The belairdirect blog has a simple guide to assembling a Flower Pot Smoker, and you can watch them building it in real-time on YouTube.
3) Offset smoker using an old gas tank
This build is a fair bit more complicated, but if you have the skills and equipment, it’s certainly a budget way to get yourself an offset smoker.
The old gas tank in question forms the cooking chamber of offset smoker, and the DIY part is adding the frame and the firebox.
A word of warning. Unlike the ugly drum smoker or the flower pot smoker, this is a complicated build that requires specialist tools, skills, and a fair bit of time.
You’ll need to cut and weld together steel box sections to make the frame, steel plate to make the firebox, and steel tube to make the chimney.
There is also some reasonably complicated metalwork needed to fit all the parts together and make sure there are no leaks and that the airflow correctly circulates the smoke in the cooking chamber.
However, if you are the kind of person that relishes a challenge and has a workshop, this is an excellent way to recycle an old gas tank into something useful again.
Basic materials needed
- An old gas tank
- Steel box sections
- Steel sheeting
- Steel pipe
Tools required
- Lathe
- Angle grinder
- Welding torch
- Pivot drill
- Vise
Skills required
- Welding
- Drilling
- Lathe use
- Advanced metalwork
