So, we're working on the garden, the BBQ area is almost ready, but what? No barbeque? No problems, we'll just build our own. So, we bought a £10 oil barrel from Ebay, picked it up, and...well it was about twice the size it looked on the picture, it's going to be one biiig barbeque.
The plan was to cut the drum in half, and make a clam-shell style opening barbeque.
Safety first.
Right, so we're no experts on this, so perhaps get some other advice as well, but make sure you wear some funky eye protectors, check out the science lab style googles. Looking good! These are pretty much essential, you don't really want any sparks of metal getting in your eyes. Even taking these photos, I had some on, not something you want to risk.
Gloves are also handy, although, some people say that it's a bad idea to wear gloves incase they get caught in the machinery, I would say, the tighter the better, if they're loose, it could be dangerous, also watch out for loose clothing. Again, maybe seek some less amateur advice on this. We're definately not experts here ;-)!
Starting to grind the oil drum down. The drum being so big, we wanted to cut two sides off (leaving the middle) to make a slightly smaller barbecue.
We first filled the drum with water, to wash out whatever might have been stored there, bit worried about sparking some gas or oil that might be left in the drum.
You can see the angle grinder starting to cut into the metal here, the toughest part being the edges where the metal is thickest. You can see the two lines across the cylinder marked out which we were following.
Making a bit of a dent in it now.
Almost through one side.
Angle grinder in action:
Look at those sparks fly! Nearly through to the other side.
Starting on the other line now.
And then we tipped out the barrel to get out all of the water filling it. Brushing it out into the drain.
