Should I buy a Smokette for cold smoking or is there better?

Brian- I made a post below about cold-smoking using the kit from CS in the Smokette. Even included a picture of the smoke baffle in place in the Smokette. You might look down at "cold-smoked salmon" in this forum on November 29.

The wood is placed in the woodbox just above the heating element, and the stainless steel baffle is above this. The wood gets heated to a temperature the surely makes it smoke while it combusts. The biggest drawbacks of the Smokette for cold smoking, IMO, are twofold:
First, apparent harm can be done to the unit's thermostat if it is used this way for more than 20 minutes?
Second, this limits the time that the fish is exposed to smoke for flavoring.

As far as humidity, as I understand it,it has to be high to keep the chamber cool and moist or the fish will dry out and may become "kippered" which is not what you are trying to do in cold-smoking fish.

Some cold-smoking processes call for smoking the brined/cured fish for hours or even days. The Smokette process is a compromise, and certainly is easy to do.

The salmon came out very nice. The amount of smoke that came out of the vent during the 1 hour & 20 minute cook was impressive, and the fish was quite cool when I took it out. I'm sure there are devices designed just for cold-smoking that can be used to get the job done more efficiently, but doubt that you can turn around and whip up a brisket or pulled pork butt as easy in the same unit.

Brian, I hope this answers some of your questions?

Perhaps, others with experience using the Smokette for cold-smoking can join in about this?

Bobby Que, Thanks for the reply. Your post was the one I was talking about. The picture you stuck in there answered half my question. Your point is well taken that this is a comprimise, but that cold smokers don't do hot smoking very well anyway. I am interested in your thoughts that cold smoking w/ the smokette damages the thermostat...

The Bradley Smoker claims to do cold and hot smoking equally well, and I tend to believe that considering the design of that system. But there is no way I'll buy a smoker that costs $10+ per use. I wonder if there are other units similar to the Bradley that don't require use of expensive Bradley-biscuits...

I've done some experimenting using my smokette to cold smoke cheese. I put the cheese directly on the top rack. On the bottom rack I put in a foil roasting tray filled with ice. Loaded the smoke box as I usually would. Set the smokette to 125 or 150. As soon as I saw smoke coming from the vent, I turned the unit off and let it sit for an hour. I repeated the process a couple times. The cheese retained it's shape and had a nice smoke flavor. I may have to try a piece of Salmon to see how it works out.