Troop 226 is going to show you how to build your very own burn barrel. I know, it doesn't sound very high tech or cool, BUT building a fire on the ground is a bad idea and lots of campsites do not even allow fire rings anymore. Your alternative is to keep the fire OFF of the ground... in a burn barrel!!
First, you need a 55 gallon steel drum. Next, you need to split the drum in half.
OK, here's an action shot of me splitting the drum in half with a 4" cutting wheel. Yes, you MUST wear a face shield and heavy leather gloves!! Now you can put the two open ends of the barrel together and get them ready to weld. You'll want to make sure the top lip of the open end has been sanded or ground to bare metal in order to properly prepare them to be welded together. I'm using a MIG welder that uses an argon/CO2 mix of gas with a solid welding wire instead of flux-core welding wire.
We're welding the two halves of the barrel together. Again, safety is VERY important. I'm wearing a good welding helmet to protect my eyes and using the heavy leather gloves to protect my hands from the heat and any weld spatter. If I were "stick" welding and creating lots of sparks, I'd use elbow-length welding gloves. The next step would be to weld up a simple set of support legs out of steel square tubing, but since we're replacing an old burn barrel, we'll just take the cutting wheel and cut off the support legs from the old barrel. We like to keep the bottom of the completed burn barrel between 12" and 18" above the ground. You also want to design your support legs as wide as possible to make the complete burn barrel stable so it will not turn over easily.
OK, here's the support legs. As you can see, nothing special, but they work really well. Next we see where the legs will contact the barrel, grind off the paint on the barrel at these locations, and grind the legs to help them fit well against the wall of the barrel.
Here's our nearly completed burn barrel with the legs welded on the barrel. Now we'll take a drill and put some holes in the barrel so it can draw in some air from the bottom when you get a pile of wood in it.
Do you see the holes now? The last thing we do is take a file and remove burrs and file down sharp edges that could cut you when handling the burn barrel. Still you should use gloves when carry your burn barrel... just to protect your hands.
Check out our events pages to see our burn barrels in action!!