Cipriano - technically it belongs to my dad and his brothers, but dad and I are pretty much the only ones that use it. My dad is retired and has taken to making summer sausage to keep himself busy and make a little coin. We typically do batches of 100 to 150 lbs of meat at a time. Next time I'm back home I'll take a picture of his sausage stuffer. He made it himself out of black PVC tubing that's about 12 or 14 inches in diameter, and holds probably about 40 lbs of meat per load. It's got a plunger that's cranked into the tube on a threaded rod, which pushes the meat out. It doesn't take very long to do 100 lbs of meat with that sucker, maybe 45-60 minutes.
We always use willow for smoke - just go down to the pasture and bring some back from the creek. It gives the meat a nice, very unique flavor. We have relatives that come out from the west coast and they say that they can't find sausage that even compares to ours out there.
All we use to heat the meat while it smokes is a small wood stove, maybe about 1 cubic foot in volume. It depends on what we're making, but usually one stove-ful packed tight with wood is enough. It burns for 2 or 3 hours.
It's mostly used for summer sausage and smokies, but occasionally we smoke jerky in there too. There are some wire-mesh racks that we stretch out across the shack and hang from nails on the sides (you can see one hanging on the left side in the picture). It works well, but takes a lot of work because the jerky still has to be dehydrated after it's smoked. It's pretty much eaten as fast as it comes off the dehydrator
Sorry if I'm jacking your thread JW. But I know you'll get over it
