Western Maryland

I am right near Rt 81 in Maryland and been trying to move more toward growing and doing as much at home as I can. Long time hunter and game meats is big to me and and making my own bacons, bologna, snack sticks and more. Built a smokehouse years back and have always thought of making a dual vaulted oven for the brick house. Since making a rocket J stove I was thinking about making a top for an oven. The stove is not insulated but tripped over this place to read some more on it. I go by Archeryrob mostly on the net as I was obsessed with primitive archery for many years back.

Welcome to Permies archeryrob.  There is so much information to be found on this site.  I've been a member for over a year now and I'm still finding new things to read.  That your time searching the posts and enjoy!

Peace

Robert -

Do you have any more details to share (or links, or whatever)?

On my long-term list of projects is to make an outdoor bread oven as part of a summer kitchen on the as-yet-theoretical garage cum shop.  I have about 750 red bricks salvaged from my sister's chimneys in the house she's renovating, so a good start on materials.  I've been toying with something more along the lines of a Scotch oven than a standard issue black bread oven, with a separate fire box which can be used to maintain heat or reheat the oven without interrupting baking or taking up premium space on the floor.  Something more like the Russian Teplushka designs by Podgorodnikov, which combine multiple cooking features in a single appliance - cooktop, bake oven, water jacket, drying/warming oven, space heater, etc.  I've been thinking that a smoker would be another good feature (separate flue path) to add to this outdoor kitchen.  Since, if all goes well, I may get a garage framed this building season, there's no big rush on the bread oven gizmo; I wouldn't likely get to that part of the project until summer of 2026.  But, it bears thinking about well in advance.

I've seen quite a few YT videos of smoke house builds, many Eastern European or West Asian.  Those have fairly traditional masonry fireboxes, definitely not J-tube rockets.  Sometimes the smoker chamber is also brick, but many are wooden structures, too.  Historically, lots of fish smoker houses were wooden structures.  And, there's always the classic approach of smoking hams in the attic of a log savu sauna.


Does the J-tube burner have enough of a turn-down ratio?  I.e., can you easily run the smoker cool enough to do cold smoking, or is it appropriate for hot smoking only?  I'm no expert (or even amateur) on smoking, but being able to smoke fish, hams, bacon and salume seems like a good step toward self sufficiency.

Anyway, thanks for showing your smoker.  I'm curious to know more.