DIY Oil Drum BBQ: part 2

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.

DIY Oil Drum BBQ

Life has been quite eventful these past few months for me. Most importantly for this post, I moved house, from a small apartment, to a comfy house. My housemate and I immediately decided it wouldn't be a proper bachelor pad if we didn't have a BBQ. Having mastered the home-made Jack Daniel's Barbecue Sauce, we are now in the process of making a BBQ from an oil drum.

We acquired two authentic oil drums, complete with remaining oil. These are the standard 55 gallon steel drums.

The design we are going for is a horizontal barbecue with a hinged lid. It isn't cut in half, as we would like to open and close it for optimal cooking heat.

First things first, we gathered a few tools and bits and pieces:

 - an angle grinder with two thin blades

 - heavy duty door hinge

 - metal tubing and mesh for the coal grid

 - a nice stainless steel mesh for the meat (and veggies of our veggie friends..)

 - a large handle for the lid

 - brackets and screws to attach everything

First: Cut the barrel!

The first step consists in marking up and cutting the lid. We chose to keep the sides whole to save weight on the hinges, and for a stronger structure of the BBQ. That step used up two small angle-grinder discs. Beforehand, the drum needs to be rinsed with washing up liquid, and a lot of water.

The next step was to fit the brackets for the grids. The charcoal rests on a grid lifted off the bottom. This should improve air circulation, and protect the steel from the heat. That grid is made up of really cheap mesh (1 inch pitch), reinforced with 4 steel rods (6mm diameter) to prevent it from sagging too much. The other grid is a nice stainless steel grid cut to dimensions. We chose to go for 2 separate grids so that we can lift one and add some more coal while cooking. 

A very important parameter is the distance between the charcoal and the meat. At the moment, we took a wild guess after looking at other barbecues. The distance is about 20 cm. We cut up the grid accordingly of course, but we are not outruling the posssibility to move the coal or the meat up and down. But we'll look into that after the first test...

Afterwards, we started the fitting of hinges on the lid. These need to be properly aligned for a smooth motion. They are heavy door hinges attached with 6mm bolts. Probably over-kill, but it should last a while.

The build was paused during the winter since we had no use for it.We did have an inaugural BBQ in this state. A second post will describe the rest of the assembly!