I'm not a massive fan of smoked meats, but was looking for a project and this seemed fun.
Picked up a 49kg propane tank with valve already removed for free on ebay and took the paint off while cleaning up some rust.
Next I cut out the bottom doors - tips on how to cut straight lines with a grinder/cutting disc welcome !
Then bolted on a couple of handles, and added a lip to the left door - horrendous welding was having trouble with the wire feed, eventually replaced the spool that had come loose and now I can't use that as an excuse
Then I cut the upper doors. In retrospect, I think they should have been taller and I could have squeezed another 1 or 2 levels in - design improvement for next time.
When I put the doors on and was checking for position for the hinges, I noticed the doors just fell inside when they closed. I'm doing this to learn welding as much as anything else, so I took some 1.5mm steel sheet and cut 200mm strips to make lips for the doors to sit against, and provide a better seal.
Once I cut the strips I secured one end to the carrying part of the bottle and gently encouraged it into a curve with a hammer.
When they were roughly the right shape, I used 4 pairs of mole grips to hold it in position to get a tight fit and welded them in position.
You can see the bottom door lips on the picture above.
Here are the mole grips holding things in place...interested in other techniques for this sort of work (bending things to fit).
And here it is with the doors attached:
Then yesterday while rummaging through the offcuts at Metal Supermarket, an idea formed from some angle steel and square bar...
I'm very pleased at how the grill for the fire turned out
Next up is a chimney. Current plan is to bend some 0.7mm steel round a drainpipe and weld that up.
Not worked out yet how or where I'll attach it at the top.
Options I'm considering:
a) cutting disc around the valve, it'll be messy, but can patch it up ?
b) cut much lower down, right down to the top weld line - then use more of the 0.7mm steel to form a cone on top of the cylinder, and "neatly" fit that to the chimney
If you say that second one quickly, it sounds quite straight forward...
Picked up a 49kg propane tank with valve already removed for free on ebay and took the paint off while cleaning up some rust.
Next I cut out the bottom doors - tips on how to cut straight lines with a grinder/cutting disc welcome !
Then bolted on a couple of handles, and added a lip to the left door - horrendous welding was having trouble with the wire feed, eventually replaced the spool that had come loose and now I can't use that as an excuse
Then I cut the upper doors. In retrospect, I think they should have been taller and I could have squeezed another 1 or 2 levels in - design improvement for next time.
When I put the doors on and was checking for position for the hinges, I noticed the doors just fell inside when they closed. I'm doing this to learn welding as much as anything else, so I took some 1.5mm steel sheet and cut 200mm strips to make lips for the doors to sit against, and provide a better seal.
Once I cut the strips I secured one end to the carrying part of the bottle and gently encouraged it into a curve with a hammer.
When they were roughly the right shape, I used 4 pairs of mole grips to hold it in position to get a tight fit and welded them in position.
You can see the bottom door lips on the picture above.
Here are the mole grips holding things in place...interested in other techniques for this sort of work (bending things to fit).
And here it is with the doors attached:
Then yesterday while rummaging through the offcuts at Metal Supermarket, an idea formed from some angle steel and square bar...
I'm very pleased at how the grill for the fire turned out
Next up is a chimney. Current plan is to bend some 0.7mm steel round a drainpipe and weld that up.
Not worked out yet how or where I'll attach it at the top.
Options I'm considering:
a) cutting disc around the valve, it'll be messy, but can patch it up ?
b) cut much lower down, right down to the top weld line - then use more of the 0.7mm steel to form a cone on top of the cylinder, and "neatly" fit that to the chimney
If you say that second one quickly, it sounds quite straight forward...
