Barrel Oven - Planning

I've already written a bit about my enthusiasm for ensuring we have something other than a camp stove and an open fire to cook on during the build of our house. I've done that before for large groups of people and I'm not keen to repeat the experience over longer than a weekend. It also seems fairly obvious that the key to ensuring we have willing and happy helpers is to keep them well fed (the whole build will go smoother with full bellies). So I don't think it's unreasonable to spend quite a bit of time and effort ensuring this is taken care of - I consider it good project management.

One of our strategies is a barrel oven:

I've seen a number of accounts on various blogs from people who've built their own ovens, including making the metal parts themselves, but they're all a bit light on detail about how they did the metal bits. Others simply purchased the metal parts from Firespeaking and just built the oven around them. Since the latter isn't an option for us (even if Firespeaking shipped to Australia I think the postage on something as heavy as this would be beyond what we'd consider worth it) we'll build the whole thing ourselves from scratch and keep an account of it here for anyone else who wants to do the same.

In the planning stages there are some fairly obvious requirements, and the rest we'll make up as we go along.

The pieces we'll need to make out of metal before we begin building the oven are:

• Ash grate
• Ash drawer
• Firebox door
• Barrel with slots for drawers
• Barrel door
• Shelves
• Chimney with baffle

We're fairly sure we'll need the following equipment:

• Welder
• Angle grinder
• Metal file
• Measuring tape
• Spirit level
• Hammer

We already have all of these, most of them purchased with this project in mind but knowing they'll be useful for others down the track. We don't yet have safety equipment for the welder though, so we'll need to get two sets of welding masks and gloves and leather aprons and so on before we can start.

And the following supplies:

• Lengths of angle iron (x many)
• Steel rebar
• Clean 55 gallon drum
• Thin (ish) steel sheets
• Various scrap strips of steel (handles etc)
• Hinges (both for firebox door and oven door)
• Ceramic fibre insulation
• 6" diameter metal pipe (chimney)
• Bricks
• Mortar
• Gravel (under foundation)
• Cement (unless we find a better foundation)
• Wood offcuts (for arch moulds)
• Large nails (for rivets)

Most of these bits and pieces are likely to be sourced from the local tip, and I'll keep track of how much it all costs us. We'll start with the ash grate as that is likely to be easiest (plus we have the bits for it already).