I've built three now and haven't needed a welder. The only specialty tool I needed was a step bit or unibit, which now I don't know how I lived without this long. When making my charcoal baskets, I went to a local metal supply place and had them cut the 3/4" round bottoms out of expanded metal for me and then used 1/2 expanded metal to form the vertical part of the ring. I used 1/2" cuz it's much easier to form into the circle.
I'm a briquet guy myself in the drums, in fact I just use Kingsford (
) and then chunks of hickory and/or cherry. And I use the minion method on that charcoal...