As a carpenter you might find it easy to make a 'cold smoker'. I managed to improvise one from a tall wooden cupboard and a biscuit tin. We had a glut of very small fish (caught by my kids off the pier) so we dipped them in brine, and hung them in pairs over dowel rails high up in the cabinet (tied in pairs at the tails).
The cabinet had holes drilled in the sides near the top. The biscuit tin contained the slow-burning peat.
They were smoked for as long as I could keep the peat burning, and ended up dry. Made good nibbles.
A neighbour had a more sophisticated version, a wooden (plywood) box with racks in, and a pipe leading to it from a firebox a few feet away. I seem to remember that his firebox was made from an old oildrum, but he did have to acquire some proper 'fluepipe' (a secondhand boiler chimney). It cold-smoked some big fish very successfully.
Garlic would definitely need 'cold smoking' if you wanted it to keep at all. Hot-smoking is basically for fairly immediate consumption.