ghetto firepit

Driftwoodbnsf

New member
There was this old cowboy staying next to me in a campground once. He was in an old camper and loved to cook over a fire. He had spent a lot of time in Mexico and said that the Mexicans had shown him an awesome way to get a portable fire pit. They would take the drum out of an old washing machine and use that. It's ceramic coated steel and already has tiny holes all around it. You can flip it over and dump the coals out when your done (Please make sure they're "dead out before you leave". the steel cools quickly and will last forever as long as you flip it over and don't let rain get into the ashes which turns it acidic. A grill fits neatly over the top and it's perfect for cooking on after a couple of fires in it burn off the soap residue. We got a couple at the dump and in a few minutes with axe and wrench had the drums out. View attachment 27106
 

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thats a pretty good idea. although ide be sure to wash out the drum of the washing machine god knows how many chemicals and what not are going to be on that thing, expecially if its been used for years.
 
I've used them before. The fire inside looks pretty through the holes.

Careful around idiots. It will get cherry hot with a decent hot fire.
 
The fire inside looks pretty through the holes.

I like staring straight into the flame while attempting to manipulate the cosmos.



Older washing machines are made out of safe steel and ceramic?

http://www.madehow.com/Volume-1/Washing-Machine.html

Did a search found this^... in the Raw Materials section says:
Whirlpool is the exception, using plastic instead of enameling iron for the outer wash tub.

Looks like an ideal use for it just would want to be sure what I'm heating up.
 
fucking amazing!! thanks.. : )
for the best efficiency (especially if you want to melt the fucking thing) the upper holes should be removed from the convection process. kinda like this: /[ ]\

basically you want the upper portion to perform as a chimney, as with any good stove, rather than a diffuser.

but yeah.. fucking rad on the ceramic coated steel, & def 1 or 2 nice hot fires to burn shit off.
a good plain water & steel scrubber, first, though.
the silica is very non-reactive, & if you steel scrape (with some veggie oil after simple soap & elbow grease), you'll get about 60% of the chem crap off.. all that stuff is essentially water soluble, so even if you did one 300 degree burn & then a scrub, yer better off than a 600 degree burn.. a high temp burn below the annealing point of the ceramic will weaken it... keep the fuel out of contact with the container.. yaddayadablarghblarh blargh..

main thing is chimnify the next to upper 2/5ths of the combustion chamber... make the last 1/5 open.

bottom 2/5 open for air, center 2/5 chimney, top 1/5 afterburner.

how do i know this?

let me get my fucking photos...
 
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