alternatives to the wood pucks

[Accidentalaquarist]

I recently acquired a used bradley original smoker.. have had it running every other day for 2 weeks.. love it.

My question: is there a way to use other wood than what's available in the pucks? I have a ton of maple, cedar, arbutus and oak shavings/chips that I keep separated for my various wood working projects and would like to try them out.. is it even feasible?

[manxman]

Welcome to the forum Accidentalaquarist, good to see you are making the most of your new acquisition.

Several people have made their own pucks with varying degrees of success, if you do a search on this site you will find some information that may help? Most of the info is probably quite old.

A Bradley owner acquaintance of mine who only lived a few miles away was one of the most successful at doing this using an old press he acquired second hand but in the end gave up because of a) the effort required and b) lack of a good supply of suitable "clean" shavings.... sounds like you have b) sorted already!  :)

[manxman]

Pictures are no longer available but having seen them first hand the finished product was comparable to the original Bradley pucks in terms of wood density and burned in a similar fashion.

http://forum.bradleysmoker.com/index.php?topic=4368.0

There are other posts on this if you have a scout around.

[Habanero Smoker]

Hi Accidentalaquarist;

Welcome to the forum.

Manxman is correct that making your own bisquettes can be quite laborious.  I have sassafras trees, black cherry trees and a few other varieties of trees; and use to have a peach tree on my property. So I understand your desire to use wood chips. When I had a desire to add sassafras smoke, or other wood flavors (even herbs), I would build a offset cold smoker adapter out of a cardboard box, and used a hot plate to smoke the wood chips. If you plan to use wood chips more frequently, you can build a permanent cold smoke box. I'm short of time for this morning, but if you use the search function to find post on how to make your own cold smoke adapter. If you have peach wood, that is the best wood for poultry, and pork.

[Edward176]

Greetings Accidentalaquarist and welcome to the forum.

[manxman]

If you have your own supply of wood the chippings / dust could be used in something like this if you are in to cold smoking?

https://proqsmokers.co.uk/collections/cold-smokers/products/proq-cold-smoke-generator?gclid=CjwKCAjw3pWDBhB3EiwAV1c5rBiUKsNYtZC6ke50JLB1ODDhYc68GUFDBXQ2MIr7Zed-jFPxzojmYhoC5BsQAvD_BwE

I have used one in conjunction with a Bradley to replace the smoke generator and pucks when cold smoking, it is placed in a separate box with aluminium ducting to channel the smoke in to the Bradley. Even if this particular units isn't available outside of the UK there appear to be a number of alternatives?  :)

I have only used commercially bought wood, you may need some trial and error to get the right consistency for the wood to smoulder correctly?

[cathouse willy]

There are a number of devices on the market to use wood chips or pellets as an alternative to the pucks. I've tried a cheap amazon one with so so results, in the end I've gone back to the bradley pucks.At 50 cts a pop it's not worth the fooling around to use my own wood chips. Here's an example of one of them

https://amazenproducts.com/

[TedEbear]

There are a number of devices on the market to use wood chips or pellets as an alternative to the pucks. I've tried a cheap amazon one with so so results, in the end I've gone back to the bradley pucks.At 50 cts a pop it's not worth the fooling around to use my own wood chips. Here's an example of one of them

https://amazenproducts.com/

I use one of their 12" pellet tubes in my Bradley.  It works great and a full tube generates about 4 hours of smoke.  A 20# bag of pellets lasts me well over a year and is a fraction of the cost of the bisquettes.

Here's a link to a thread where someone manufactured his own pucks out of sawdust.

Homemade DIY Bradley Smoker Biscuit Instructions

[Habanero Smoker]

There are a number of devices on the market to use wood chips or pellets as an alternative to the pucks. I've tried a cheap amazon one with so so results, in the end I've gone back to the bradley pucks.At 50 cts a pop it's not worth the fooling around to use my own wood chips. Here's an example of one of them

https://amazenproducts.com/

I have tried wood chips in a 12" A-Maze-N tube and it didn't work. Though I only tried a couple of times, it seems that you would need to get the right size chips that are small enough to make good contact with each other and leave a little airspace. Too large they seem to go out because they are not touching enough, too small and they compact too much and smother out.

[mustangmoe]

There are a number of devices on the market to use wood chips or pellets as an alternative to the pucks. I've tried a cheap amazon one with so so results, in the end I've gone back to the bradley pucks.At 50 cts a pop it's not worth the fooling around to use my own wood chips. Here's an example of one of them

https://amazenproducts.com/

I have tried wood chips in a 12" A-Maze-N tube and it didn't work. Though I only tried a couple of times, it seems that you would need to get the right size chips that are small enough to make good contact with each other and leave a little airspace. Too large they seem to go out because they are not touching enough, too small and they compact too much and smother out.

The A-Maze-N tube was not designed for wood chips. Only wood pellets and dry ones at that. If they are to damp\moist they will not burn very well at all but when you use a dry pellot they burn very well and outperform any bradly puck at a fraction of the cost. Even the  SMOKER MAZE works better with wood pellots then saw dust. I find the tube smoker the better of the two.