Ugly Drum Smoker

Just BS: Thanks for the advice. Sand blasting up here is pricey. I called a few places and they want around $60, depending on the joint.

Funugy: I am going with the food grade. I was trying to avoid the burn but I don't think it can be helped. I've heard of people putting in those long burning logs and letting it go to town. I figure it should keep the fire under control. Since it was food grade, you think that would be good enough?

That is a tricky question. The goal is to get the entire barrel as hot as possible. I might have gone over board on mine, but this is what I ended up doing;

I put in about 8 splits of firewood and lit her up. The billowing smoke only lasted till the fire got going, then it was pretty clear after that. I did get a burnt paint/chem smell as the exterior paint burned away and ashed white. I had the barrel on 3 6" tall blocks to keep it off the ground and the grass underneath was still burnt, I kept spraying water under the barrel just to be safe. I let the wood burn for about 4 hours, I did add a few more splits once it got going. The problem was that only about 3/4 of the lower part of the barrel got hot enough for the paint to completely ash over. I didn't notice this until the next day as I let it cool over night. This bothered me as I wanted to be certain that the entire barrel was heated enough, so out came the weed burner and I torched it with that. The rest of the paint ashed in a hurry, and I was able to get the metal red hot in short order.

Next time I will just wash, torch with weed burner, and wash again. And by the way, my barrels are marked as being food grade holding "biodegradable, Kosher Coconut Oil." I got the barrels from a steel recycling plant. Since I didn't get them directly from the original user/owner there was no way to be certain nothing else was in them so I may have just gone overboard.

Good thing I'm at the the border with Mexico.... a barrel is about $9.00 USD... and the sand blasting is less than that over there.

To fill a small gas tank [for the torch] is about $4.00 USD

And most important... BEER is cheaper!!!!

I have a patch of rocks where a hot tub used to be. I was going to set the can up on cinder blocks and do it there.

How much propane did the weed burner consume? I heard it wasn't worth it to do the entire barrel.

Wh1skey6 said:

How much propane did the weed burner consume? I heard it wasn't worth it to do the entire barrel.

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Probably half of a tank... but not the whole tank for sure....

but what counts is the fun of doing it...:thumb:

My neighbors are going to love me. I heard that the propane burner sounds like a jet engine. I am going to HF to pick one up if I can't find a friend with one.

For those that are using prob thermometers, where are you position the ambient probe?

Wh1skey6 said:

For those that are using prob thermometers, where are you position the ambient probe?

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I drop my thru the exhaust opening and lay it on the grate...

Just BS said:

I drop my thru the exhaust opening and lay it on the grate...

Click to expand...

Do you also mount a thermometer on the smoker body? I'm wondering if I need to with my Maverick 732. I don't have a dial thermometer so it'd be yet another expense.

For my digital I stick the probe through a wine bottle cork and I trimmed the bottom of the cork to fit snugly into the grate.

Another option to remove the exterior paint is to use some paint stripper, and once the paint is off the torching is just to sterilize the barrel, which shouldn't take long.

I post this question in earnest, in the hopes of beginning a civil discussion
on the subject of Barrel Burning.....This is something I have pondered on a while..
Riddle me this, if a food grade barrel that has the methyl-ethyl-poly-bad-stuff liner, or not, in it, gets burned out completely to bare nekkid metal and is thought to be safe to BBQ with, why then is the run of the mill barrel, that contained stuffs without a liner be considered an unwise choice if it also is burned out in the same fashion???....
And I'm talking the reddish-white, glowing metal kinda burn........

Thoughts???

Fory, I dont know that I would use that blazer swisslube barrel. Swisslube is a water soluble cutting oil used in machine shops. Just my humble opinion.............

cheapbeer said:

Fory, I dont know that I would use that blazer swisslube barrel. Swisslube is a water soluble cutting oil used in machine shops. Just my humble opinion.............

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hehehehehee.... that's not my picture... that's from a post from NORCOREDNECK, who seems to be a "guru" in the UDS world.

In that post, he describes step by step how to build a UDS.

My barrel was used for somekind of PEACH.....

However, I believe that once burned, there should not be a problem with a barrel.... fire kills everything.

I have a torch/weed burner.... it would be interesting how hot the metal can get with it... at least mine got "white hot"

Wh1skey6 said:

My neighbors are going to love me. I heard that the propane burner sounds like a jet engine. I am going to HF to pick one up if I can't find a friend with one.

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hehehehe..... that's nothing.....

Call your buddies and start burning... you can't imagine all the jokes they'll come up with.... :becky::becky::becky::becky:

Wh1skey6 said:

Do you also mount a thermometer on the smoker body? I'm wondering if I need to with my Maverick 732. I don't have a dial thermometer so it'd be yet another expense.

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I have a piece of a 2x4 that I set it on, on top of my lid.

Oops

N8man said:

I post this question in earnest, in the hopes of beginning a civil discussion
on the subject of Barrel Burning.....This is something I have pondered on a while..
Riddle me this, if a food grade barrel that has the methyl-ethyl-poly-bad-stuff liner, or not, in it, gets burned out completely to bare nekkid metal and is thought to be safe to BBQ with, why then is the run of the mill barrel, that contained stuffs without a liner be considered an unwise choice if it also is burned out in the same fashion???....
And I'm talking the reddish-white, glowing metal kinda burn........

Thoughts???

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My initial thought that if the lining is made to touch food than it is inheritantly safer than say, a drum that had cyianide in it. Having said that, who knows what the chemical reaction of the liner is once heated. So therefore, your argument has merit.

If we all stay away from everything then none of us gets anything done.

@N8man I believe that if the barrel is burned hot enough you should not have a problem. The problem is that like in my first burn the lower 3/4 of the barrel got hot enough to burn the exterior paint off, but the top 1/4 did not get that hot. Thus the reason I still used the weed burner.

Now with all that said, since one may not be 100% certain that the entire barrel was heated to a degree that will sanitize/neutralize any harmful toxins in the barrel , it would be prudent to start with a food grade barrel if possible.

Luckily I found food grade barrels, but if I did not, I would have still used them and taken the same precautions. Besides, as I said before; just because the barrel originally was food grade, it could have had a second storage use before we got it.

Ugh. So I got to the barrel place and went thought the barrels. Wouldn't you know it. The food grade ones had frozen concentrated apple juice...so it had the freakin red liner. The guy didn't realize that was what I meant by liner.

I bought it anyways because I needed a barrel. I started googling different ways to get it off. Apparently there is a mix opinion about how dangerous the liner really is. Since I can't do a burn, I figure i have three choices:

1) hit it with a weed burner and try to get it off. Half tank of propane is $9.
2) fill it with a good portion of coals, lay it on its side, and let it burn. I read that the coals directly on the sides will get it off. Two bags of briquettes is about $14.
3) leave it as is and season it a few times

Thoughts?

You can have it sand blasted out I would not leave the liner in it. As to an unlined drum containing chemicals a good hot fire will purge it of all toxins.