Steel for DIY Fire Pit - Advice Needed

   / Steel for DIY Fire Pit - Advice Needed #31  
I found one at a salvage yard. They had taken a demolished high tension utility pole and cut it into 16" pieces. The wall is about 3/8" and my section is about 60" across. Weighs around 250lbs. I then dug a hole and rolled the piece into the hole. Works great and I really like having the fire down in the ground. Air draw does not appear to be an issue.
 
   / Steel for DIY Fire Pit - Advice Needed #32  
Just as an aside

In our hood there is a company that does pipe work. I mean like 24" pipe work, not 1/2" not sure for what but there scrap metal pile is a gold mine for fire pit material. I even think the local parks department raids their scrap all the time for firepit rings.
 
   / Steel for DIY Fire Pit - Advice Needed #33  
Go big or go home!

I used 3/4" plate steel that my old neighbor's wife gave me just after he died. He was a member of a local railroad club - not a model railroad club, but a real railroad. They had about 5-6 miles of track just east of Huntsville, AL.

I forget what these particular pieces of steel are called but they are used when tracks cross or come together.

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Good luck!
 
   / Steel for DIY Fire Pit - Advice Needed #34  
I cut the end off of an old 200gln propane tank. Set it on a truck rim and welded it. Plaz'd a few holes in the bottom and threw in a hunk of heavy rock quarry screen. Never painted it and it's 15yrs old.
 
   / Steel for DIY Fire Pit - Advice Needed #35  
A few years ago our COO at work asked if I could have our weld shop guys make a smallish fire thing for his wife - a cat lover. We took a large leftover weld reducer and plasma cut cat silhouettes in each quarter. She loved it.
 

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   / Steel for DIY Fire Pit - Advice Needed #36  
I posted this one I saw in Africa a while back. It was made of hex rod, but you could do the same thing with some #8 rebar. The ash/ember pan could be made by a local shop using 304 stainless or inconel. Put a larger fire ring of concrete block or stone, similar to what's in the photo.
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   / Steel for DIY Fire Pit - Advice Needed #37  
For a fire pit. ( hill )

use about sic 2 by 2 concrete sidewalk blocks placed on a gravel pad about one foot high. Or some large slate rocks.
lots of air circulation. Easy to set up a cooking platform, gives nice heat to surroundings, let’s you use longer lengths of wood.

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   / Steel for DIY Fire Pit - Advice Needed #38  
Unless you want to move it all over to different places, I'd just use stone. This is what I did in a day. Took 3 ton of pea gravel, and some landscape stones.

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   / Steel for DIY Fire Pit - Advice Needed #39  
I found a section of 3/8" wall Stainless Pipe x 3ft diameter x 28" tall. I dug a hole in the ground, then poured 4" thickness of concrete, then set two layers of fire brick on the concrete, then set the section of pipe on top. I then added sand to fill any gaps between the bricks. I have a 3ft diameter stainless commercial dryer drum I use universally, on top, as a containment cage when burning lots of paper, which can be rotated so (if windy) the sparks do not get blown out. I can stand the dryer drum upright to create a stack. I have a 1" stainless rod (drove into the ground) next to the pipe, with a stainless framed/screen that rotates freely on a preset stainless collar which is on the 1" rod.

There are no "draw" holes cut in it. This set-up puts out a TON of heat.

I've been using this setup for 20+ years.
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