Build a Smokeless Fire Pit Stove with Step-By-Step DIY Instructions

what's the worst part of any fire well you got it it's smoke there's nothing worse than smoke and it can follow you all you have to do is put a chair near that fire and i guarantee that smoke is going to come right towards you so you know what started out as a great evening the kids are coughing they can't even do the marshmallows because that perfectly dry wood you have is smoking because the fire pit is lousy and there's nothing you can do about it well there is we're going to show you step by step how to build your own smokeless stove at a fraction of the cost stick around we're about to begin okay where do we start well you're going to need a couple 55 gallon drums they call these open head that means you can take the lid off and it's got a locking band you're going to need two because you're going to uh need quite a bit of metal to do this and one just isn't enough plus look on the bright side you're going to have some spare parts and once you get these two drums pay attention to that tip make sure you match the lids and band to the proper barrel because they are not all the same the other biggie here you don't want to forget is make sure that the contents of this drum was not flammable or combustible because if you start grinding into this thing you're probably not going to live to talk about it so you know there a lot of these factories have these open head drums for soaps and things that are harmless so that's a biggie do not forget that and don't try to use one that's got any flammable vapors inside of it here's a drawing showing your cut lines this is going to come in handy down the road because you're going to get a little nervous before you cut into that drum and ruin anything so refer back to it here's a picture of the bottom of the drum the opposite end of the lid the removable lid and this will eventually be the top of your stove the diameter of this 55 gallon drum is 23 inches so make sure you didn't accidentally get a 30 gallon drum which is going to be considerably smaller just wanted to point that out next thing we're going to do is mark the bottom of that drum i found it a lot easier just to take my silver permanent marker and put it in the notch where my blade would normally go the blade was removed from my jigsaw and then just run it around and what that gave me was one and three quarter inches all the way around the perimeter now this is not crucial it doesn't have to be one and three quarter but i would make it at least that much and you want enough space between your inner and outer drum so if it ends up being a hair more and one to three-quarter don't worry about it uh if you have to use something other than your jigsaw and then just uh take a piece of wood that's 1.75 and run it around that inner edge but that's the way i did it before we start doing all of this metal work let's make sure we have good safety equipment you're going to need eye protection ear protection you're going to need leather gloves and you should probably have some long sleeve uh shirts on so you don't have to worry about those sparks catching your arms on fire let's go ahead and drill a 3 8 starter hole for our jigsaw blade make sure you drill that hole on the inbound side of that line we just made so we don't mess up the top of our stove while we're talking about jigsaw blades these are the ones that i use and they work great for me they're very durable they're made by bosch you can see at the top it's got a three rating for the speed of the cut now in my case i've got an older jigsaw that uses a u-shank if you've got something newer it's probably a t-shank so and if you're not sure just bring your jigsaw to the hardware store and they'll uh they'll help you out but this is a good blade and this is the one i recommend okay let's go ahead and cut that out and one thing i do want to tell you is once you get your blade and your jigsaw and you start the cut you're going to have to hang that rear left side of the jigsaw off the top of the drum otherwise you won't be able to turn it so don't try to keep the entire jigsaw on that lip it's just not going to work and you'll see what i mean right away but anyways just to hang that off on the outside as you're going around and you're going to be good to go stop the cut about halfway through and take a putty knife or anything you have and put it in place and by doing so this disc isn't going to try to drop on you and pinch your blade and give you problems it's going to help you in the long run and there you have it the finished cut now you have a lot of fun getting rid of all these burrs and you definitely want to take time doing this on both sides of this disc and that inner lip on both sides just take your time you'll be fine i used a combination of tools i usually use just a a metal file and then i like to use an orbital sander with a 100 grit on the sander or by hand until you you know you get rid of all birds you don't want anybody getting cut on the stove when you're done with it the other thing i want to bring up is the build height of this project my ford f-150 is a bed liner so that raises the level of the floor a little bit and when at all possible i like to keep that tunnel cover closed when i'm traveling so i've got to make sure i'm less than 21 inches now if you have a chevy or a toyota well it probably won't fit uh i'm just messing with you but who knows if you decide to build this and you have a smaller truck maybe you should just tell your better half that you're going to need a ford f-150 and you can thank me later the next thing we're going to do is put some blue tape on the lid end of the drum this tape is going to be used for making marks that will allow us to drill the vent holes that will eventually be on the bottom of the stove on the outside drum so go ahead and wrap that tape all the way around and then take your t-square and mark one and three-quarter inches all the way around the perimeter once you've got that done it's a lot easier if you get yourself a a cloth tape like a seamstress would use or something to that effect and wrap that around and tape it in place and start marking off one inch increments on that line you drew on that blue tape we're going to end up drilling holes at each mark for our next step we're going to need some bits in order for these holes to come out nice we have to start with a smaller hole and work our way up so we're going to need a 1 8 inch bit a quarter inch bit and a half inch bit eventually we'll need a 3 16 bit for rivets but for this purpose of the vent holes it's only 1 8 one quarter and half that half inch bit is going to require a half inch drill so if you don't have one you may have to borrow one and if you don't step forward and enlarge these holes a little at a time what's going to happen is is that half inch bit is going to get real grabby on you and start peeling out metal in something that doesn't look like a circle so just uh keep your bit cool you know i was using a small container of water i could continuously uh dip the bit in just to keep it cool and make those bits last longer and don't forget about that deburring and sanding you're going to have to get a three-quarter inch deburring bit and go easy with that just enough to get the burrs off and then use your oracle sander with that 100 grit to do that final edge and get everything off of there so everything's nice and safe we're going to need some more blue tape you're going to go 15 inches from the end of the drum that you just cut opposite of the lid and so then you just cut you're going to put your blue tape down you're going to draw a line all the way around the perimeter that's at 15 inches and then you're going to go ahead and mark the same one inch increments with that claw tape because we're going to be drilling more holes that's going to end up being the holes at the top of the inner drum next step we're going to measure out our 14 inch and 16 inch cut lines you can use a 16 inch t-square or you can make your own t-square out of pieces of lumber with a perpendicular piece that you can run on the lid end and use your permanent marker and mark both lines out you can see on this little chart here what the pieces will end up being eventually starting from the top there's a the outer drum which is 14 inch piece there's a band we're going to use uh that's going to attach the smaller part of the outer drum at the bottom there it says outer drum two inches that will be attached to that foreign 14 inch piece and uh we're also going to have a inner drum which is 16 and a half inches so all right so we marked our 14 and 16 inch lines or if you want you could mark just the 14 and take a 2 inch blue tape and run it around and the other side of that blue tape would be your 16 inch cut and the next thing you're going to have to do is you're going to have to drill some starter holes for your jigsaw the other thing you can see i did here in a photo is i i made sure that when i get done with this band that gets cut out this two inch band i want to round off those corners so no one gets jabbed when they're handling the stove so that's important but i just wanted to show that on the drawing there and i don't want you to cut this yet either i want i want you to go ahead and mark it and you can drill your your starter holes for the jigsaw but we're gonna go to the other end of the drum the cut end of the drum opposite of the lid and we're gonna mark off one and three-quarter inches and i know it shows in my cut diagram that that's a a two inch section but don't be alarmed you gotta remember that we're measuring on the inside of the lip of the drum so if you include that lip it will be in fact a two inch piece which will be our eventual top of the outer drum the top of the stove so go ahead and mark that out and after we mark that out the same deal you're going to have to use your your 3 8 drill to cut a starter hole and then we're going to cut that line first and then we'll go back to our 14 and 16 lines and cut them out as well the logic behind drilling first and waiting to cut those 14 and 16 inch lines is if we were to go ahead and cut those 14 and 16 lines and then drill afterwards and then try to do the other two inch end well it's going to make for a floppy drum it's going to be harder to handle and you know this is just going to make your life a little easier all right you've cut that one and three quarter inch measure and now you know the routine you got to get rid of all the burrs same way you're going to get rid of the birds when you go to cut that 2 inch band here next so go ahead get rid of all those use your files use your sanders and we'll go ahead and start cutting that two inch band next now we get to cut our two inch band out on our 14 and 16 inch lines so go ahead and get that done you've already got your starter hole drilled and once you get that done what we're going to do next is we're going to have to take that inner drum portion and we're going to have to cut a line on that and what i want you to do is take up a t-square and make sure you've got a nice perpendicular line to that cut edge and put some blue tape along that t-square and we're going to cut that all the way because we're going to have to make sure this drum is cut because we're actually going to be folding it inside of the outer drum and trimming some of it off so go ahead and cut that put your tape on there make sure it's perpendicular get that cut and then we'll go to the next step all right so you've cut your perpendicular line on your inner drum next what you're going to do is make sure of course all your burrs are gone and you've seen that everything's smooth and put those leather gloves on and what you're going to do is you're going to take that 2 inch ring that we that we made which is the top of the stove and you're going to fold that inner drum overlapping itself enough where you can take that ring and slide it over the top now you're not going to be able to push it down too far because the way these 55 gallon drums are made there are ridges that will prevent you but that's okay you know just push it down a little bit past your your vent holes and the next thing you're going to do is you're going to take a sharpie and you're going to mark along you know on the inside of the drum of the inner drum you're going to mark along that overlap line and once you get that that's going to be your cut line so keep in mind that we aren't cutting from the inside we're going to be cutting from the outside so you're going to have to take some blue tape and you're going to have to make sure that you make little references on that tape which side you're going to be cutting on and go ahead and put a little tape on on one end and wrap it all the way down to the other end so it hits the marks and then make sure that you go to that tape on the outside of the drum and you put some type of a reference showing you where to cut because if you cut on the wrong line if you don't cut on the right line your your inner drum is going to be one inch short and you're going to have to throw it out and you'll say bad words so a word to the wise do that you do have a second drama if you had to which is good you've got a backup plan but you really don't want to go that far you put too much work into this inner drum so go ahead and put your tape on there and once you've got that you're going to go ahead and cut on the line you're supposed to and once that's done you're going to take your your irwin clamps i like using those quick grip clamps and you're going to make sure that uh you know you put that drum back inside that two inch ring and then you're going to take your erwins and you're going to clamp the drum so those ends of the inner drum are touching okay now if you can clamp them together and they're touching and you can still fit that two inch ring over the top where the vent holes are well then you've done a good job now if you can't and you're trying to muscle that that two inch ring on there well you know you just you're gonna have to trim off a hair more if it's too tight just mark again where those pieces of the inner drum overlap and take it out of that two inch ring and mark it up with tape for a nice straight edge and cut a little bit off and put it back together and you should be good to go but go ahead and clamp it back together uh make sure you drop your ring on and if everything fits we're good to go on the final uh inner drum cut and we're ready to put our uh reinforcement piece on the inside with rivets all right so now what we want to do is take that scrap piece that we have from our inner drum that we just cut off and you're going to want to cut at least a three inch piece and go ahead and cut three inches off and once you get that what you're going to do is you're going to take that scrap piece and throw it on the inside of the inner drum make sure the um the inner drum edges are touching each other and center that that scrap piece on the inside of the inner drum so your vent holes are lined up nice and pretty and clamp everything so you'll be able to drill and rivet clamp it down make sure the inner ring fits and then you're you're good to go as far as drilling your holes and riveting and let's talk a little bit about rivets before we get into drilling all right let's talk about rivets these rivets are not going to be found in your hardware store you're going to have to either go to a specialty store or in my case just get them on amazon and you can see that these rivets look like they might be considered a half inch grip range but they're not you know they're a quarter inch grip range and you have to make sure that their diameter for the hole is 3 16 you're going to be using 3 16 drill bits make sure you at least have one or two of those but another thing i will mention is stainless rivets are tough on the hands when it comes to using a hand rivet gun and if you have one or decide hey i would like to own one of these go to harbor freight and get yourself an air powered rivet gun and you know who knows maybe by the time this project is done you'll end up with a few extra tools and there's nothing wrong with that we can always use them for future projects but just wanted to mention that that these stainless rivets are tough on the hands and you need them you can't use aluminum all right you're ready to drill and rivet and one little trick you may want to do is take your two inch ring and drop it over the top and that way you know for sure that this inner drum is going to fit in that two inch ring when you're all done you're still going to want to use clamps holding that reinforcement strip on the inside and make sure those vent holes are lined up the other thing you have to remember too is when you mark your rivets and you can see in this picture the rivets are already done but when you mark your rivets make sure the rivets near the vent holes are below the vent holes otherwise it's going to interfere with putting the stove together or taking it apart one benefit of the stove is you can take it apart to clean it properly and uh as far as the rivets on the bottom keep them four inches from the bottom of the inner drum too and uh we're only going to use six rivets that's all we need these are tough stainless rivets and they'll work just fine and i've also included a picture of that pneumatic rivet gun and uh this really makes your life a dream you're going to be doing quite a bit of riveting on the nose cones so you'll see that later on but let's go ahead and clamp it up put your ring on first and drill out your holes and go ahead and put your six rivets in okay it's time to use that two inch band that we had left over after cutting our 14 and 16 inch lines so the first thing you want to do is put some witness lines down the middle of that on the inside and that's going to help you center it over the upper and lower portions of the outer drum now these rivets are going to be 12 inches apart and you're going to stagger them so they'll look closer than that when we're done you're also going to have some rivets reinforcing the corners and i've got a picture to show you that but just so you know the total count for rivets on getting the band done was 15 so you know you got to watch it on your rivet count because you only got 50 of these if you order them from amazon if you ordered more than 50 you will you can use all you want but i only used 15. when you're marking because it's a two inch band you have to remember that the rivets will be an inch and a half away on the top rope and only a half an inch away in the bottom roll get all that marking done before you start drilling and riveting it's going to make your life easier the first part about making this pagoda are making these copper standoffs now when i started to design these i realized that i couldn't have something with a real tight fit because over time that inner drum is probably going to heat up and warp a little bit so that's the purpose of having that half inch piece with the slotted it inside three quarter it's gonna allow a little bit of wiggle room if if i didn't do that and i tried to cut that slot in a three-quarter inch piece i think it would be a real struggle to get the inner drum on and the purpose of these standoffs are it allows our airflow to come from our outside holes on the outer drum and go underneath the inner drum so they're pretty important and what we're going to do is we're going to make four of these now if you look at this picture you can see we're going to have to go to the hardware store we're going to buy a few things we're going to have to buy four of these three quarter inch caps we're gonna have to buy a short section of uh three-quarter inch pipe a lot of times they won't make you buy a eight or ten foot section you can buy a two or three foot section and the pitcher doesn't show it here but you're going to also need a short section of a half inch copper pipe too and we'll give you some detail on that picture here in a minute but let's start with this three quarter you're going to cut four of these at at 1 3 16 and that will be inserted into that cap that will give you a total length of an inch and a quarter then you're going to grab your uh your half inch copper and you're going to get quantity for those cut and you're going to cut slots in all of those at least an inch and a quarter deep and once you get those done you can also see what i i did to make it easier to insert the inner drum is i brought these over to a belt sander you could do it with a dremel or whatever you need to do but i widen the top of the slots which would make it a lot easier to drop that inner drum so that's that's step one of the pagoda build here we have to get those copper standoffs made and here's a tip on cutting those two inch sections of the half inch copper mark your pipe off and then take your jigsaw and cut that inch and a quarter slot first and then take your pipe cutter and cut it to a two inch length it's going to be way easier and way safer here's another tip for widening those slots on those two inch sections you know maybe you don't have a one inch belt sander well i think you could just take your tin snips and just nibble off a piece on each side and then give it a little bit of sanding with a piece of sandpaper to remove any burrs and i think that's going to do the same thing for you all right so here's how we're going to go attaching these copper standoffs to the lid and it's all about alignment we've got to make sure that when we install these that we're never going to have a hard time with putting this stove back together so first step lay your lid down second step drop your four standoffs on the lid and slide the inner drum onto all four make sure when you set this inner drum in that you take the seam on the inner drum where you riveted and you're going to line that up with that small drain on the lid and that's going to help you down the road when you go to take this apart and reassemble and not have any problem once you've done that get all of your standoffs opposing each other all four make sure they're nowhere near any of the drains when you do that once you've got that done you're going to take and take your outer drum and drop it down on top of your uh your inner drum and make sure you push that outer drum all the way down use rubber mallet if necessary to make sure that it is firmly into the lip on the lid okay so if as long as that outer drum is in the lid and as long as that seam on the inner drum is lined up with a drain and you've got your standoffs the way you want try to center that small half inch piece of copper into the center of each three-quarter inch cap you know just do the best you can you don't want it jammed up against the side of a three-quarter inch cap and once you've got everything just the way you want it with your seams aligned you're going to take a sharpie and you're going to mark the outside of that three-quarter inch cap and mark the lid you know make sure your lid is clean and dry otherwise your sharpie won't leave a good mark now you're only going to be able to get about a a half circle and that's okay just be gentle when you're marking it so you don't move your standoffs and once that's done you're gonna pull this all apart and you're gonna take that three-quarter inch cap and you're gonna complete the circle and that's gonna give you a reference on where that standoff is going to be now you can just eyeball it and put a sharpie dot in the middle of each circle and on each of those dots you're going to be drilling a 3 16 hole for your stainless steel rivet you're also going to have to drill 3 16 holes in the three-quarter inch caps you can see by this picture i wasn't really careful on at least one or two and i really should have tried to uh maybe use a prick punch to get that drill bit centered on the cap but uh and once that's done you just drop your caps back on top of your lid and rivet all four and your standoffs will be complete and you'll see at the end of this project when you go to take apart this stove and put it back together it's important that you line up your seams with that small drain because as much as you'd like to think that this inner drum is round it isn't and if you don't and you just jam that inner drum on there any way you want well you may have a little bit of a tough time dropping that out or wrong on so use that tip and let's move on all right the standoffs are done let's go ahead and build the bottom plate of the pagoda you remember when we cut out the bottom of the 55 gallon drum one of our first steps well we're not going to waste that scrap we're going to take that and we're going make that bottom plate of pagoda by taking the um the bottom of a five gallon bucket and put it on top of that plate and use your tape measure and keep measuring all the way around until you've got it perfectly centered once you do take your silver sharpie and mark that and then we're going to drill that out make sure that you put your starter hole for your jigsaw to the inboard side of that so it doesn't look ugly on us when we're done and go ahead and use your jigsaw clamp that to the edge of the table and cut maybe up to half of it and then rotate it again and cut the rest and of course we have to make sure we sand and de-burr and get that all in good shape well we're not done with that bottom plate of the pagoda yet what we have to do is we have to remove some of that perimeter on that plate or it's going to be way too tight on that inner drum and we can't have that because we're going to be disassembling it a lot to clean it so go ahead and grab your jigsaw and you can just freehand this there's no need for a compass and remove a quarter inch from the entire perimeter that'll give us a half an inch of free play and that'll make our lives a lot easier when we go to clean this stove in the future make sure you dry fit it make sure you can drop it into that that inner drum with no problem and it's loose because if it's snug you're going to have to cut it again just make sure you get that loose and assembly of the stove will be much easier all right next step we're going to make the top plate of the pagoda that plate is going to be 12 and a half inches wide what i did was i took a compass and i taped a sharpie to it and i drilled a small hole in the center of that now make sure when you're cutting this out that you uh you try to position the plate where it's not going to grab any indentations near the drains or anything like that so and if you don't have a compass well you could probably make one out of a couple of pieces of wood with a sharpie tape to one end and a nail tape to the other and just widen it until you get six and a quarter inches and put it in that hole you drill in the middle and you'll end up with twelve and a half so go ahead and get that done and when you're done with that you're gonna have to make sure you uh sand and de-burr all of that all right now we need to build some separators for the floors of our pagoda we're gonna need eight of them and they're gonna be two inches long we're gonna be using three quarter inch copper so let's go ahead and get those cut now once they're done the next thing you're going to want to do is take one of those separators and put it on the inside edge of your lower plate mark the outside of that separator do the rest to the three others and make sure they're opposing as best as you can eyeball it you're going to need to put some dots in the middle of those and drill them out go ahead and grab that 12 and a half inch upper plate of the pagoda and drop it on top of the lower plate using a tape measure just keep going around the outside edge until you get the same measurement and you'll know it's centered once it's centered go ahead duct tape that top plate to the bottom plate make sure your steel is all dry before you duct tape it or otherwise it's gonna peel off i know from experience once you've got that now you're gonna flip those two over let's mark all of our holes right now because if we don't and we don't use the same holes for all of our bolts going up through uh it's not gonna line up very well remember we eyeballed these separators so go ahead and mark all those and then what you're gonna do is you're gonna take the sharpie and you're gonna mark that top plate through the holes we just drilled once that's done you're going to go ahead and drill all of those holes on the top plate all right how's everybody doing you need a break need to get a refreshment hit pause that's what it's there for all right we'll carry on here what we want to do now is we want to create some bolts for the pagoda now originally when i started designing this thing i looked at bolts at local hardware stores and depending on where you go you can definitely pay as much as three dollars and 30 cents for a single bolt so i'm trying to keep costs low for you guys and that's why we can make the same bolts without having to go through all that expense we can use threaded rod it'll be a lot cheaper and maybe a little more fun if you like cutting steel so let's go ahead and grab that threaded rod and we're gonna measure it off we know that it's eight inches is what we need so in my case i use a cutting wheel on a side grinder and you can see by the pictures that it's not too pretty when we're done here so there's a before on top and an after shot so when you put this on your sander whether it's a a grinder or a sander this is what you want when you're done at the bottom so go ahead cut those grind them off get rid of all those burrs once you're done with that we got to remember to use a half inch drill bit for the upper and lower plates of the pagoda and only a 3 8 drill bit for the bottom lid that half inch bit for those plates of the pagoda is going to give us a little bit of wiggle room to move them around so let's go ahead and drill all of the pagoda plates with half inch holes and before we can drill the bottom holes in the lid we have to mark the lid so take your bottom plate of the pagoda and center it as perfect as you can get on your lid that's important you're going to need that you don't want this bottom plate of the pagoda snagging up on the inside of the inner drum so mark it with a pencil because you're going to have a little bit of distance between the plate and the bottom lid just the way it's shaped so don't move it at all once it's perfectly centered mark it with a pencil after you're done marking all four holes don't forget to number those marks on the lid to match the numbers that you have on the pagoda plates that way all your bolts are going to line up then you can remove that bottom plate make a little dot with your silver sharpie and go ahead and drill the 3 8 holes in the lid and half inch holes on all the pagoda plates bear in mind that those first holes i drilled in the pagoda plates were a 3 16 bit as a starter and if you want to go higher on that before you get to the half inch you know be my guest to go up to a 3 8 and then the half inch just so that bit doesn't get grabby on you all right what are we waiting for let's assemble this pagoda first thing we want to do is make sure our lid is oriented in the right position so the lip will receive the outer drum when it drops on there next thing we'll do is grab four of our bolts we made let's put nuts on the ends of those and slide them up through the bottom and let's drop on four of our two inch copper separators next step is the bottom plate and keep in mind you know you've got numbers on the bottom uh lid the bottom plate and the top plate and they all have to match so uh now we've got that bottom plate on there with our numbers matching and we got four more separators all we have to do now is drop on our top plate and what i like to do then is grab four washers drop them on first and then tighten down that nut we've still got a couple more things we got to do before this pagoda is finished the first thing we have to do is on our bottom plate you can see where it is protruding over the top of our copper standoffs so just take a sharpie and mark out a little semi-circle so it will not interfere with putting that inner drum on and you're going to have to do that on all four of them and the next thing you want to do is just snip those out go ahead and get your your tin snips and cut them out and then take some type of a file or sander and make sure all those birds are going so nobody gets hurt there and once that's done the only other thing we have to do is our bolts are probably going to be too tall we're not really going to know how much we have to cut off the pagoda bolts until we install our burn plate and i'll show you that next all right to make our burn plate we're going to have to use the bottom of that second barrel we're going to cut it a little bit different than the bottom of the other barrel the first one we did but pretty close half of it will be the same the outside of the barrel we're just going to run our jigsaw right along the outside that's going to give us approximately a two inch height on that uh fire ring for uh keeping the temperature off the bottom of the stove now the inside we're gonna do it a little bit different because what we want for a burn plate is 17 and a half inches so we're gonna have to draw a circle that's 17 and a half inches either with a compass that we have or we're going to have to make our own compass and once you have that 17 and a half inch uh circle drawn on that you're gonna have to cut out that plate uh the inside of our inner drum is approximately 18 and a half so that's going to give us about a half inch space all the way around that burn plate so let's go ahead and get those both cut out you know what i would do is i would cut out the metal plate on the top of that first and then run my jigsaw around the side of the barrel and get that done secondly all right so we've got our burn plate cut out we've deburred and sanded and made everything safe now all we got to do is drill some holes into this burn plate i've got 29 holes in mine and i used a compass to put them in some type of an orderly fashion i didn't want to put the holes too close to the edge i've already got a nice vent there with a at least a half inch space all the way around and if i got my holes too close to my brackets that are going to hold the burn plate it might weaken it so anyways just use your compass and it isn't something that has to be exact but the neater you make it the better it's going to look and then go ahead and drill those out if you got a drill press sure is going to make it easier uh i would step up still you know i would i would at least drop in a 3 16 a hole first and uh if you got a drill press you might be able to get away with going uh half inch after that and then deburr and sand and the next thing we're gonna do is make our burn plate supports all right let's get these burnt plates support made now i had some spare stock around and uh had to cut them to size but if i didn't have these i would have just uh taken some flat stock and benim at 90 degrees and just give yourself enough room where you can get your rivet gut in there i would make each portion at least an inch and a half long and you know in my case i wanted to drill two holes on the portion that was going to be riveted to the inner drum i don't believe one rivet is enough there but on the top i only wanted to use one rivet just to give it a little bit of flex under high heat so that's the deal get those made and here's a nice chart here that shows you how to go ahead and put those in basically all you have to do is measure up from the bottom of the inner drum five and three-quarter inches to the top of the bracket and mark your holes then drill your holes and rivet let's move on all right let's get this firing done there's not a ton of work to do here you're gonna have some ventilation holes all the way around the perimeter spaced every four inches you could probably put a a few more than that if you want to but that's what i used uh those are half inch vent holes and the other thing we have to do is we have to get four bolts that are going to be a 3 8 in size by one inch long with four nylon lock nuts what you're going to do is you're going to drill holes on the lip of that fire ring that's going to be a half inch from the inside edge and once you do that go ahead put your bolts in tighten them up and if you're lucky you'll be able to just drop the lid of your stove onto that and it's going to hold it now for some reason it doesn't allow the lid to go all the way down or it's a little sloppy just go ahead and take some voice grips and grab that bolt and bend it in or out whatever you have to do it's going to bend fairly easy so don't worry about that until you get the fit just right and once you're done uh you know you're obviously going to have to deburr everything to now i'm going to order a piece of plastic edging that will go on the bottom of this fire ring and the only reason i want to do that is i've picked up the whole stove while it's on the fire ring and even though i don't have any burrs or sharp edges it's really too sharp of an edge to pick up plus if for some reason this fire ring ends up on a surface i don't want to scratch it's going to protect it as well so the firing is done let's uh go back to our pagoda we need to trim those bolts to size and i'm going to show you how to do it what i'd like you to do is set your pagoda down and don't put in the half inch pieces of copper all you're going to need is the three-quarter inch pieces that are assembled on the bottom and now you've got that what i want you to do is i want you to drop that inner drum uh all the way down and what's gonna happen is is the bottom of the burn plate is gonna hit those bolts we know they're too long so go ahead and drop your inner drum on there and you're going to see an air gap between the bottom of the inner drum and those three quarter inch copper pieces now in my case i had 3 8 of an inch air gap so that tells me i'm going to have to at least remove 3 8 of an inch of those bolts but that would be playing it too close so let's just go ahead and uh let's remove a half an inch so our top left picture shows our air gap after our drums on and burn plates touching the bolts and the uh the top right picture shows my double nuts brought down to a point where i know that i'm going to be at three inches which is gonna remove approximately a half an inch of product off those bolts once we cut off the top of the bolts then what we're going to do is uh the pitcher in the lower left shows that the inner drum is now touching the copper make sure all four are touching if they aren't then you may have to trim an individual bolt on the side that's still showing an air gap but if they're all touching then go ahead and tighten up your double nuts you're done and as a final fit you can throw those half inch pieces of copper into your standoffs and make sure everything's copacetic there but that's going to do it our bolts on our pagoda are now trimmed and when i got done cutting off the top of those double knots i made sure they were tight and i used my cutting wheel to act as a grinder and uh just smoothed them up nice no burrs etc that's it we are done with the pagoda all right let's do a reality check here what we're going to do is we're going to assemble this stove go ahead and drop your pagoda on the floor or the ring it's done now and go ahead and put your copper standoffs in all of them then drop your inner drum in make sure it's firmly seated no wobble and then take your outer drum and push it all the way in and use your rubber mallet if you have to and give that a tap make sure it's seated into the lid what we're checking for here is we want to make sure that those holes in the inner drum are below the deck of the outer drum that deck is what i'm talking about is that um two inch space going all the way around the top that that's critical if for some reason you could see the deck through the holes well uh that's not good you know what for some reason you cut your copper standoffs a little too high or something but we've got to make sure that those holes are below now mine aren't much below i mean i think i'm well i don't know a quarter inch or whatever but as long as they're below that deck we are in good shape now if uh if you're in good shape we can move on to the next spot if you're not well look and see what you've done wrong possibly the the biggest problem would be either you drilled your holes um a little too high or hopefully it's something as simple as those standoffs being a little too tall and you may have to trim a piece off of that three-quarter inch copper that drops into the three-quarter inch cap but i just wanted to mention that before we move on and work on our nose cone okay guys and gales we are closing in on the end of this project all we have to do now is go ahead and grab yourself some of that scrap metal we have laying on the floor and cut yourself a piece that is three and a quarter inches long and two and a half inches deep we're going to be using that as a template it's going to be easier to mark our nose cone petals versus trying to put a tape measure on there so go ahead and grab that get that cut exactly to size like i say three and a quarter wide two and a half inches deep and now run that all the way around the inside of your nose cone and make your mark for not only depth but width all the way around now if it doesn't come out perfect on that last petal use your best judgment but if we did everything right we should have a pretty good looking even petals on that here's the part where if you get a little bit lazy you're not going to have a very good nose cone you're going to have tons of air leaks i've seen some people who build these smokeless stoves when they go to make the petals and keep in mind the whole the whole idea this nose cone is it it holds that smoke in place while that air is coming through the inner drum holes so it won't allow that smoke to escape and just go up into the heavens it's retaining it just long enough for that fresh oxygen rich hair to get to it and ignite so it's important um anyways getting back to the task at hand here you know mark everything around but do not i repeat do not cut these slits with a cutting wheel on a side grinder what's going to happen is is you're going to end up with wide kerf and if you don't know what kerf is i'm a woodworker and i i deal with kerf a lot and it's just the amount of product that's removed you know you're going to have less curve on a bandsaw than you are in a table saw and so what we want to do is take our tin snips after we get all our marks we're going to carefully cut down to that depth line of two and a half until they're done all the way around and here's a little tip for you when you get to the point on the inside of the inner drum when you go up and measure your marks where that strip is the three inch strip that we riveted to keep the whole inner drum together what you can do is mark that down two and a half and then carefully fold the top of that strip down remember we didn't rivet above those holes and fold it down to that two and a half inch mark and carefully snip that out of there because if we don't it's really gonna make our life a little miserable because uh chances are one of those vertical lines are gonna end up on that strip and it's twice the thickness so just go ahead and uh you know cut out uh only two and a half inches of the top of that reinforcement strip that we riveted in and we'll move on here all right our nose cone petals are all snipped now what we're going to do is we're going to individually fold them down at that two and a half inch mark and what we want to do is fold them down uh always in let's say you start clockwise you know and always keep folding in the same direction just don't start mashing them all down do them one at a time and you know look at my pictures just to kind of visualize that angle i don't know let's say it's a 45 degree but bend down that first petal about 45 degrees and then what you're gonna do is when you bend down the second third fourth fifth keep moving in the same direction so the overlap looks nice what you want to do is bend those pedals far enough to achieve a half inch overlap to allow a room for drilling a hole and riveting don't play it too close so you uh you want to get that half inch overlap now once your pedals are completely bent all the way around and you may have to tweak one and push a little farther if it isn't delivering that half inch but once you've got it go ahead and take your channel lock pliers or i'm sorry take your vice grip pliers and carefully grab both pedals just enough where you can clamp them together nice and tight and then give yourself enough room to drill a 3 16 inch hole and you know you're going to be free handing this but just make sure that you're not going to hit the edge of that pedal that you can't see and you'll be fine you know just make sure you've got that half inch overlap you're going to be able to do it so go ahead and drill a hole now you can see where i probably had that hole positioned down at least oh i don't know 3 8 of an inch by the time you get the finished hole you've at least got a little bit of material left above the rivet don't play it too close at the top either so go ahead and uh drill one out put your rivet in and go ahead and uh make sure that you rivet after you're done on each petal and move on to the next one and there again that pneumatic riveter is going to make your life easier on this project with those stainless steel rivets but go ahead and finish up the whole job and get them all riveted and we will be done with the nose cone all right we are so close to the end here here's one option you may want to consider is putting a little bit of anti-seize on those steel plugs the reason i say that is is that large drain plug is definitely adequate enough to stick the end of all garden hose in there and you may find that uh with just ashes in there on the pagoda that you want to just hose it out using the plug and not take it apart so i would advise getting some of this anti-seize putting it on the threads of both plugs and that way you're never having to worry about that rusting up on you with that said the last step we really have here is to paint our jolo firestove and in my case i did a beta test with this stove and uh lit it a few times before i went ahead and painted it because i decided there may be changes i needed to make and don't worry about that if you do that just take a wire brush and knock off any loose flakes and paint right over the top i went with this rust-oleum high heat a quart of it uh at first i started thinking about using spray paint but for me spray paint would just be a hassle for this project we got a lot of surface areas here we have to do both sides the inner drum outer drum and every little part of this so i i think i'm going to end up with thicker coverage and i did have some left for other projects in my garage so it worked really well for me it laid down nice so i would stick with this rust-oleum high heat it worked really well and go ahead and get that on there and let that adequately dry and put it back together and we have ourselves a completed project painted and finished okay what we're going to do now is we're going to take this stove all apart it's one advantage of this build is is you can take this entirely apart and hose it out maintain it a lot easier than some of the other uh manufacturers that make these so first thing we got to do is we got to remove our bolt i've already loosened this a little bit let's loosen that up let's flip the stove over use our heat ring to hold it bend or nose cone at all so let's go ahead and get this bolt off of there once our bolt is off take our ring and take one side one side off and that will come right off all right get yourself a screwdriver put it in one of the holes and it'll help you pop your lid off there we go all right now we can remove our pagoda we'll set that aside there's going to be four copper standoffs that are still attached to our inner drum let's grab those we're gonna need these for reassembly okay now we'll just give this a little wiggle this inner drum all right inner drum comes out set that aside and now you've got your your outer drum you can hose that off as well and i'll show you how to reassemble now so you start with your heat ring first thing you want to do is put your pagoda back on and here's that little tip i uh talked to you about during the construction of this uh use that small drain hole as a guide to reassemble this back together the same way trust me it's going to make it easier because even though this build seems like it's round it's more like it's oblong and it's going to go back together easier so anyways put your pagoda back on your heat ring take your standoffs and drop them back in the receptacles and put the slots parallel with that bottom shelf of the pagoda all right so those are in now next step we've got to take our uh inner drum and put that back on what i like to do is line up the seam of this inner drum with that drain wait for mr fedex to go by okay so let's take that seam and we're going to drop it into our standoffs one at a time just work your way around sometimes it goes quick sometimes it doesn't but it's not a big deal all right and if it doesn't wobble we know we've got it okay so inner drum is in we're all lined up with that seam let's take our outer drum and a little tip here keep your hands on the outside otherwise it's going to try to pinch it on that nose cone same thing here we've got a got a seam on this so we're going to line that up with that drain too all right now the first part that's going to be a little tough is getting this over that nose cone that's a tight fit don't use your hands you're going to end up hurting yourself so just get a rubber mallet and give this a couple taps it'll drop on there don't be afraid to uh give it a good whack this pretty tough build here okay you'll be able to tell just make sure that lid is all the way in all the way around and it looks like it is so it's going to be tight enough you're going to be able to lift this without that locking ring so let's flip it back over so we can get our locking ring on there you can hold it a little bit just to make sure it doesn't fall off put it back on our heat ring let's grab our locking ring now one tip you can remember here is these lobes can either be facing up or down while we're reassembling we want these lobes to be facing down if you don't this won't set into your firing properly so start it on one side [Music] pops on easy grab our bolt we won't tighten this all the way we'll just snug it a little bit so we can flip it back over and you know finish the job with a crescent wrench we won't do it right now we'll just snug it i actually upgraded this bolt to a stainless bolt you don't have to do that though if you worry about it rusting you know put a little grease on there but i like the idea of using stainless steel okay locking ring is on we've got to flip it back over drop it back in our heat ring and that is it you know not too bad easy enough to take apart easy enough to clean i wanted to give you guys some comparative costs and dimensions for this build once it's done so you can use this as a reference to see what you've got when you're all done the other thing i want to do is show you the actual cost that i had now i owned most of the tools so i didn't have to go out and buy any but just borrow them from a friend and if you do have to buy a tool well that's one of the best parts about being a diy-er okay i wanted to add this disclaimer you know you see a lot of people using these fire pits while they're camping that's my intention you also see some people using them on patios and that's great too but one thing i would never do i would never advise is putting one of these over on one of these you know i spent an awful long time building this deck and these smokeless fire pits they run hot and yeah i've got a burn ring and all that but you know who knows it could it could damage your deck worst case scenario it could catch it on fire you know after you decide to go in at the end of the night and you know and you can't throw water on these to put them out you're gonna warp this stove so you know just don't even think about it you know if you decide to use this on your deck well that's on you but i just thought i'd throw that in there for safety's sake well that's a wrap and the end result for me was well we have a couple happy campers here i want to thank you all and if you like this video please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to our pompano brownie channel and that'll do it for this video

Channel: Pompano Brownie

Views: 1,507

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Id: gccIi6NiBqc

Length: 68min 20sec (4100 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 14 2022