Thread: How to make a 58-1/2 gallon oil drum (learn from his mistakes)

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yup. no telling what kind of chemicals were in the drum.... B4 we built an incinerator pit in my back yard. I cut the tops out of the barrals with a stick welder. always filled them up 1/2 way with water b4 doing it.. most of the chemicals that were in the barrals were not flamable anyway ( my dad knew what they held as he got them from the company he worked for at the time ) and for them to meet the waste requirements so they could even sit outside, they needed to be washed out anyway.

Good example of learning the hard way, thankfully for him not as hard as it could have been. The notion of "oil not working that way" is kinda silly. It's still a hydrocarbon, the same stuff gasoline and diesel fuel is, just a heavier molecular weight. Given the right conditions, enough heat to vaporize it, and you've got a combustible.

Just an aside, if you want a 55 gal burn barrel/garbage can, try to find a grease drum, they have a removable top held on by a band clamp. No cutting required (though perhaps some messy cleanup depending on how clean you need it )

I saw that too on the HAMB..........Wow, he really got burned bad, but was lucky to be alive. My Dad told me a story when I was a kid about two friends of his who were chiseling on a Model A gas tank to get it out and it blew up and killed one guy and badly hurt the other one.

This stuff can kill or hurt us badly if we aren't careful and think ahead.

Don

Originally Posted by Matt167

yup. no telling what kind of chemicals were in the drum.... B4 we built an incinerator pit in my back yard. I cut the tops out of the barrals with a stick welder. always filled them up 1/2 way with water b4 doing it.. most of the chemicals that were in the barrals were not flamable anyway ( my dad knew what they held as he got them from the company he worked for at the time ) and for them to meet the waste requirements so they could even sit outside, they needed to be washed out anyway.

Matt, in my youth a welding instructor was talking about welding on gas tanks. He said filling a gas tank with water and welding on it only meant that you would die WET !!!

Originally Posted by HWORRELL

Matt, in my youth a welding instructor was talking about welding on gas tanks. He said filling a gas tank with water and welding on it only meant that you would die WET !!!

I know, theoreticlly it could raise the flammable gasses up in the barral making them more likely to ignite... but these were washed out chemical barrals. my dad knew the contents and there properties because he worked with them all day long. they were the base chemicals for a lot of skin care products..

Put dry ice in the barrel first. As the dry ice returns to a vapor (carbon dioxide), it displaces the air (20% oxygen) in the drum and you cannot get ignition because there is no oxygen to support ignition.