Now that the warm weather is coming back we decided to carry on with the assembly of the BBQ. After browsing online, it seemed that the most convenient thing to do would be to use the second barrel as a support for the main barrel. In order to do so, we cut the top off the second barrel to make a cradle:
We've had a few very successful BBQs so far with friends, however the lid is still incomplete. It is ready to be assembled, but we don't have a handle yet.. We are looking for a nice wood dowel to make the handle, it seems like the best option in terms of heat and durability. In terms of use, we usually use only one side of the BBQ when we are less than 5 people. Despite its large size, we also regularly use it to cook our food for just the two of us instead of the kitchen stove. We also had a BBQ for 15 people where we had to use the whole surface and it got very hot! The food was ready for everyone in a very short amount of time. So far we've made burgers, sausages, fish, buffalo wings, and vegetables and it all came out nice! The large grill allows to move the food around to have different amounts of heat, which is convenient to cook multiple different things together. I imagine the lid will allow us to do some more advanced cooking too.
Finally, a word on the steel's durability. It seems the winter didn't affect the steel too much, it's rusting outside but not loosing its strength at all. The BBQ remained outside the whole time, unsheltered, and only the hinges seem to have rusted. After the first BBQ in autumn, we also noticed that the mesh supporting the charcoal caved in. We did use a lot of charcoal that time, but we feel it should have been able to support that amount of weight. This means we need to replace the struts stiffening the mesh, or put something underneath (a brick) to keep the mesh flat.
