Stick burner in the Making

Today was one of those days when you wanted to get a lot more done than you actually did.. Don't get me wrong; we made some progress, but the elements didn't help (if only we lived in Jamaica!).. Anyways, I didn't want to leave you guys with absolutely NOTHING, so I took a few pics of what little we did get done.

We cut the tongue down to size...it was just way too long. We took approximately 3ft off so the overall length is at about 18ft now.



De-greased the frame and hit it with some POR15...The wind was ferocious so we paused on that temporarily.



Got the inner box welded on all sides. The end that will be attached to the cooking chamber is face-down on the ground. As you can see, there isn't a 2in gap there like the rest of the box...saved about 40ish dollars and that side of the box honestly doesn't need to be double insulated. We'll add a small section of angle iron at the corners (on the sides) for extra support and to keep the walls spread so we can fit the other piece on with ease :-D.



This is another shot of the firebox just so you can get a feel for its over all size. If we wanted to, we could actually ball ourselves up inside (not at the same time of course).



This is a shot for those who are concerned about the stability of the project :boxing:...just a sample of the weld..the good seams were on the bottom, but the arc welder is providing excellent penetration. The breaker switch would flip every 3-4 inches so there was a lot of stoppin' and goin'.

Last weekend didn't leave much to share, so I thought I'd add a few bits from today to hold you over until this weekend. While I was home, the old mane took to the firebox some more.

This is just a shot of the firebox where the door will be...pretty obvious, I know...



This is a shot of the firebox - chamber opening.. you can kinda guess where we got the plans for the build :-D . The flap isn't bent out enough yet..we'll have to heat it up to get it down another 15 degrees or so..



The last shot is the aftermath of my dad catchin' his self on fire while cutting the openings..

CarolinaQue said:

If you're tripping a breaker that often...some thing is very wrong!

Nice build though...looking forward to seeing the finished product!!!

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Haha! You're right! The outlet is wired with like 14-16ga wire. The small wire is just heating up too fast :tsk: . It gets annoying for sure!

Preachin to the choir here. Unfortunately, it is what it is and you gotta work with what ya got... The breaker is there to break, though and it's definitely doing it's job.. There won't be any fires, just a lot of starting and stopping. We might rewire the outlet since there's a lot of welding left to do.

We will probably rewire with 12ga. Right now it's wired with 14. We are welding 1/4" steel which is adding to the dilemma. We're just using what we have. We do have some 12ga wire so we'll probably be making the upgrade this weekend. Wont be able to do much beyond that without spending more time and money. No fires yet and we've welded several feet. With thicker wire we should do a bit better.

Just to set everyone's mind at ease, we are aware of the complications and the outlet is only 1.5ft away from the garage door opening...There is also a big red fire extinguisher sitting right by us at all times. Anything we could/would need to choke an electrical fire is within arms reach. We know what the optimal setup is and what we are currently using. The breaker can trip 100 times in a day and you probably won't see one fire..or a spark.. The wire cools within 30-60 seconds, then its back to business.

The only thing that will get hurt is a back from bending over much longer than is normally required...or somebody catching on fire from sparks while cutting/grinding steel :-D. Honestly, an electrical fire is a much smaller concern than worrying about increasing our weld time 10 fold.

Aside from safety concerns, we are happy with our current progress. Things are taking shape and moving right along. So far there's only been 4 days of actual work put into this build. Hopefully we can finish in another 4-6 full days.

CarolinaQue said:

Is your fire box going to side on the lower platform?

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Yessir. Didn't want to hang it off the back, and the trailer is looong so we decided to scoot everything forward.

CarolinaQue said:

Looking forward to seeing it completed. Are you making it walk up from the ground, or are you going to step up onto the trailer?

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Are you referring to how we will load the fb onto the trailer? If so, we'll have about 4 guys lift it and set it on the tail end of the trailer.