Laurence Edwards tours the Thorn Beekeeping factory to show how a copper Empire smoker is made from start to finish. Large sheets of metal are punched, formed, beaded, and seamed using vintage British machinery and custom tools, then assembled without welding using rivets and precise clips. The whole process reveals the traditional engineering and quality control behind each smoker.
In my hand here, I have a copper Empire smoker manufactured by Thorn Beekeeping. In this video, I'm gonna show you how they put together this smoker from the very beginning all the way through until the very end. So this is how the process starts. Big 8 by 4 sheets of stainless steel or galvanized steel or copper come into the site, and then they use a big punch press to punch out all of these individual components. That top bit up there, that's gonna be curved to create the nozzle of the smoker, and then that bit down there, that's gonna be curved as well to create the body of the smoker. So what I absolutely love about this site here, it isn't all newfangled machines and it's definitely not imported from China. This is proper old-fashioned English or British engineering. Found some really nice old pieces of equipment and machinery in here, but everything, pretty much everything for the smoker is done by hand and the end result really is a premium product. So all of these trays here are containing accessories and parts of the smoker. They come into the factory as sheet metal and they go through various processes to be formed into these shapes here so that they can be put together to assemble the Empire Smoker. So this cone here is how they create the ultimate cone on the top, but the first bit of the process needs to put a little bit of a groove in just so everything connects together.
Flip it over, slide that in there, round, slide that back in there, and then you clip the 2 together. Brilliant.
So you can see there's a good few processes that are required there. They're marking out all of those individual pieces of metal, they're bending up the corners, and then there's probably like 3 or 4 different kind of twists and bends that they need to do in order to form that material, but more importantly to get it to clip and connect together so it doesn't come apart. So all of that banging there is just compressing all of that metal together in between those grooves to make sure that it will never come apart. Really, really nice finish. So inside the spout there, they put a purpose-made cone in order to stop that cone getting crushed. They make the tool in-house as well. Nothing is imported here, everything is UK-made. So this is the first step here in flanging out that top material, a little bit of a collar on there. So it will sit neatly on the main cylinder of the smoker. So this next machine here just goes in there, apply a little bit of torque, and it completely flattens out that edge piece collar. So just trimming off the edges there, tidying everything up.
See that?
So then that final process there is called turning the tops out, where you have the flat collar bringing it back in upon itself so that spout will sit directly on that top cylinder. So then the next piece of the smoker here is the collar. Very similar process, it's just pushed out on a punch press, and then you've got that little turnover bit on the top there that's folded over, and you've got a notch there directly on the end. That's going to get curved around now to create a collar. So then that collar there is hand-turned around another implement that was purpose-made for this job. And then as you can see there, the collar just clips directly into that spout, into the recess that was created before. So then after they do a little bit of seaming, they put a gauge in there to test, and as you can see here, an absolute Perfect fit. So then those little bits on the outside, they're clamped together, and then that's going back into a press to push everything into position. There's no welds on this smoker whatsoever. Everything is either beaten together or pushed or pressed.
Seam drops nicely in.
So then 2 little rivets go into that hinge, connect it to the collar, and then you've got your final assembly for that top piece there. And then the final little hole on the top for the knob. So that there is the top And then after the seaming tool, you can see there you've got a really nice finish. So the beader machine there puts that little groove in the top to give you the barrel, and then that's what the spout will clip into over the top to give you that airtight seal. So there we go. As you can see, the spout fits neatly onto the cylinder there. And as you can see now, it's really starting to resemble a smoker.
Yeah.
So then you take the bottom piece, which again is cut out here using a circle cutter, pre-prepared for this video.
Fly first. Yeah. So it gives that lip around the—
Oh nice.
So what we're going to do is we're just trimming this up and keep turning it and slowly bring it up.
So then that goes back onto the jenny wheel to bring that fold down, and then you end up with this nice little bottom piece there that looks really, really tidy, ready to slot into the bottom. So then it's just a final little trim to make sure that that's ready to fit onto the cylinder. So really starting to take shape now. The base is on, it's fully connected. Again, no welds anywhere on this smoker at all. All that's left now is to put all of those pieces together.
Solid.
So another couple of rivets on there connecting that hinge onto the base of the smoker.
Just round serve.
So a little bit of quality control at the end there, just getting that nozzle perfectly round at the edge. Really, really nice.
Couple of wing nuts to screw in.
And here we go, here is the finished product. I have to say, I didn't think that so much went into making these smokers. Like, I kind of assumed that maybe some of the bits were bought in and they were put together, but it really is fantastic to see that Thor make every single little piece of this. Was he barring the black knob up there? But not only kind of buying in the bits and assembling themselves, that they make every single little piece of that. You saw the workmanship and the old tools and all of those hammer blows. Like, it's a bit of a work of art. I'm really proud to own one of these Empire smokers, and I have to say they're by far and away the best smoker that I've got in my arsenal.
