Question to those who have made their own bacon

Looks pretty good! The pork bellies I've gotten had the skin removed. I would think you could try to skin like cleaning a redfish and using a sharp knife. I wouls stick it in the freezer for about a half an hour to make it easier to cut.

I did mine in a large covered container and used some (very cleaned )pieces of PVC pipe to keep it out of the draining solution.

I remove the skin. If you smoke it with the skin on it renders the skin useless afterwards .. very tough and rubbery, so take it off and make some cracklins with it. Also agreed if you take the skin off don't when you flip it discard the juices that accumulate.

I used 1 tsp per pound bc thats what I seemed to read the most when researching it. I had a half a belly and it weighed 6 pounds. Aside from the pink curing salt, I also used regular salt, brown sugar, finely chopped garlic, a little maple syrup, and some Bengal Hickory Grilling Blend from Red Stick Spice Co. in BR.

I noticed some said to flip every day, and others said every other day.

It's my first time so hopefully it comes out good and I'll expirement with other rubs and curing ingredients.

By the way, that is a pretty sweet smoker box at the bottom of your post. Did you make that?

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It's my first time so hopefully it comes out good and I'll expirement with other rubs and curing ingredients.

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You should be fine. After experimenting with wet and dry cures, all I use now is kosher salt, coarse black pepper and turbinado sugar. After curing in the fridge for about a week, I smoke it on my ceramic smoker as low as I can get it (around 180) until the internal temp hits 140, I think. It's been about 6 months since the last one so I'd have to check on the internal temp range.

Post it up. I have a thread on here somewhere of my build I think. If not, I definitely do on some other sites. smoking meat forums, smoked-meat, smoker builder