Mechanical cutters are expected to be an aid to teeth and therefore they should be made to perform their part by being fitted with sharp knives to do the cutting. Choppers are only necessary in making summer sausage although some manufacturers prefer to rock their fancy breakfast sausage.
Smoke Houses.
—The management of sausage smoke houses for ordinary sausage vary considerably. [Figs. 159] and [160] with description illustrate one of the sliding carriage types. The smoke house carriage is made of angle irons and is run on a track which is supported by vertical columns. The outside tracks can be raised to any height desired to match the tracks in the smoke house. The sausage is hung on this carriage and run into the smoke house, and when it is sufficiently smoked the carriage can be drawn out on the movable rails, the sausages taken off, others put in their place and the operation repeated.
This device necessitates a carriage for each set of tracks in the smoke house. Later practice tends toward the use of some sort of cage—operated from overhead rails; the sausage department being arranged with rails near to the stuffing tables. Extending to the smoke houses, thence to the cook boxes and on to the hanging rooms. This arrangement is so familiar that it does not require further description. The tracks are made in such form and size as to fit the houses and usually conform to one of the types illustrated.
FIG. 160.—DETAIL OF SMOKE HOUSE CARRIAGE.
The modern houses are built of brick, about 54 inches in width, which will allow, clear of the frame, two to four inches. In depth the houses vary and can be from ten to sixteen feet. Where possible, they should be built on a corresponding level to the cook rooms and grinding rooms, so as to avoid the necessity of using elevators. This brings the fire pit within a reasonable distance, which is a decided advantage for high temperature smoke houses.
Smoke house compartments for summer or dried sausage can be from two to three stories and should be built exclusively of brick, as it has been shown by numerous experiments with sheet iron and iron lined houses that these are not a success for smoking all kinds of sausage. The draft of the house is, of course, regulated by ventilators at the top.
Better results are obtained by the use of tin clad wood center doors than by the use of plate iron doors.
