Is my Drum red lined in a bad way?

I've never seen that. I'm an auto worker and my UDS drum also held grease in a heavy plastic bag inserted into the barrel but the wall was clean uncoated steel. I would suggest sandblasting all of that red stuff out before burning.

I don't think that any drum manufacturer will release drums that are not

rust protected on the inside. What looks like shiny bare metal will more than

likely have a Clear Coat rust protection on it. Burn it out.

I had a very similar liner on my "food safe" drum. It is a pain to remove. I burned it out with a weedburner, had multiple fires in it, tried to grind it off, nothing. What finally worked was oven cleaner. Spray the heck out of the inside with oven cleaner and let it hang out for at least several hours. I may have even let it hang in there over night. It took several cans, but I was able to basically wipe away the liner after that. From there, I did another burn to get the oven cleaner residue out, then seasoned.

There's basically two sides to this discussion. One camp says that if it still in tact after a huge blaze, it isn't gonna have any effect on your food. The other camp argues that you don't know chemicals are seeping out of the liner when heat is applied.

Hot fire.

Glowing red. if anything is still there it's fine.

See if you can make scratches in it fairly easily. If so a good burning will be fine. If it ends up being epoxy, it will be tuff to scratch, burning is not so effective- time to sand blast it.

Way back when I started my BBQ forum career, they called that "The Dreaded Red Liner". This red liner is probably the number one reason folks recommend buying an unlined drum. It is a bear to remove.


I recall reading about somebody using a specialty paint stripper product with great success. The oven cleaner idea is also a possibility. If attempting to burn it out, you would want to have your intake holes pre-drilled before the burn, and get that mofo as hot as you possibly can.

wah00kid said:

Looks like burning, grinding or stripping using oven cleaner or something else are my best options as I called around and couldn't find any sandblasting options.

Click to expand...

A local powder coating or paint shop likely has a sandblaster. I had a bicycle frame blasted and powder coated for only $100 by a go-cart racing shop that also did some paint and powder work.