Thicker 55 gallon barrels

IaLeo

Well-known Member
For several years I have been heating my shop with twin barrels (barrel stove) satisfactorily but have to replaced them every few seasons due rust and burn-out. I believe that I have used "syrup" barrels, supposedly a little thicker material. Is there another type of barrel that is known to be thicker? Appreciate your comments...Leo
 
You are looking for a "spec" drum. 1A1 "Y" rating 1.5 specific gravity. Find a drum reconditioner and ask for heavy duty drum.
 
On the bottom of the drum is a bunch of numbers. Those are the gauge of steel thickness. One is side wall and the other is the ends. In my dads shop we did that double drum thing and the bottom one we got from the oil heat supply dealer. Real heavy drum and a pain to cut. Worked though!
 
I made a nice little shop stove out of three Dayton truck rims and 2 pieces of 1/4 plate for the ends. The ends were not trimmed to round on the bottom and serve as legs.
 
My Father used to call them gas barrels, they are galvanized and pot bellied, like a wooden barrel. I think you would want to get it real hot outside before putting it in a building, to burn off the zinc.
 
Yup ya learn all kinds of crazy knowledge. I like the fire brick idea if you can find the thin ones used to tapper out the edge of boilers. The standard ones are think as a regular house brick. Something I would do for giggles was to pour about a gallon of drain oil in the ashes before I started it up. Toss some cardboard and a couple of small split pieces and light her up. About ten minutes later you have summer time of heat in your shop! I work in one of the casinos and have access to all kinds of stuff. I can pull these boxes out of the trash and give them to friends who have wood stoves all nicely cut up. If you go the the super market you can get boxes that sea food and ice packed veggies come in. These boxes are very heavy and soaked with WAX so they do not fall apart. Cut them up with a good pen knife into strips about 3x6 inches. Toss one under some split wood with some crumpled news paper. The wax acts like a nice big piece of pressed fire log that you buy in the store but this stuff is FREE. It works GREAT!!
 
(quoted from post at 20:11:44 12/13/14) Can the bottom be lined with fire brick?

At one time you could get a dry mix of fire brick by the bag, add water and mix it like mortar or concrete, then just trowel it in place.

Dusty
 
a lining was mentioned using sand brought the memory of grand daddy lining the bottom of his forge with red clay mud let it dry ,built a fire in it and let it burn out to harden the clay lasted the rest of his days
 
Hello IaLeo,

Lining the bottom even with just sand will make them last longer. There are stainless barrels to be had also. They would last longer if oyu can find them,

Guido.
 
I have a few of them "thick" ones. they are about a third heavier if not double. Our company got our paint delivered in them when we went urethane. When I found out they were going back to the thin ones, I brought a bunch home. Last forever as burn barrels. I offered two to a buddy for stove and in two yrs never came to get them. Guess I'll just hang on to them.
 
I've got a double barrel shop heater at my work, we used 2 thin barrels and its going on 4 years of hard use. Hard use is burning all day long throughout the winter at least 5 days a week, sometimes having raging fires with forced air and oil burning. Often times the bottom barrel will glow red in areas.

I had my doubts that the thin barrels would last long, at least the bottom one but so far it doesn't appear to going bad at all. I do have a grate I built for the logs and by design of the round bottom there is usually a couple inches of ashes left under the grate after cleaning, maybe that really helps from burn through. I will look for a thick barrel for the replacement when it's needed.
 
Burning off zinc killed a blacksmith friend of mine. Be careful and use good ventilation if you try this!

Cliff(VA)
 

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