How to make a Simple Fire Pit & Tie Fighter Grill | I Like To Make Stuff

hey I'm Bob it I like to make stuff today we're gonna make a simple fire pit and a TIE fighter grill for a long time we've been wanting to put a fire pit in our backyard and this is a really simple project that anybody can do you don't have to have any special tools to make the fire pit but the first step is finding the right spot now we decided to put it right here which may look like a bad idea because there are trees around here but if you look straight up there's actually nothing right above us so this spot should be pretty good I don't think we'll catch anything on fire as far as the trees go so the first thing is figuring out where we want it then we got to go to the store and get the supplies so I'm just trying to figure out how big I want this thing to be and the easiest way to do that is just to lay out a ring and then once I figure out how big that is I'll count how many stones are in there ring and then get for those rings up and should be good to go [Music] let's dig down a little bit so the first row of these is actually going to be about halfway down in the ground just to keep it playing it and keep it in place and then the other three rings will just be on top of that kind of offset to the brick pattern [Music] I'm gonna make a little spike just out of some scrap wood to stick right in the center of the fire pit so I can build around that and make sure that I have like the right radius all the way from that Center boy probably not necessary but it should be helpful okay the Sun is actually out now so you can see what I was talking about this area doesn't have any tree cover directly above it so I think we're good the first thing I'm going to do here and this is not necessary I'm gonna put in a little temporary stake and that's going to act as a center point so when I make the ring around this I'm gonna use that as a point of reference to make sure that the ring is the same shape all the way around I figured out at the store that it was going to be 14 pieces to make up the circle so I'm gonna lay those out here and you can't just lay them on top of the ground you don't have to dig down to do one of these but by digging down about half the thickness of a brick you're gonna have a little bit more sturdy bottom layer and also it gives you a chance to flatten out the surface where it's going to sit when you're laying these out especially on the bottom layer you want to put a gap maybe every 2 or 3 bricks so that there's a channel for air to be able to travel in and feed the fire I went around the outside and the inside of the circle to break the grass using a shovel now you certainly don't have to do this but I didn't want to rip up any more grass than absolutely necessary I've got the ring all cut in and of course you could dig out all the grass in the center if you wanted to I'm gonna actually build this thing up and spray some roundup in the middle just to kill all that grass or you just leave it there and it'll burn I guess alright next step is to put these back and then start putting on the other layers alternating them in a brick pattern pretty simple [Music] all right the first row is in place and I had to shift them a little bit because I actually made it too small when I first put them in so if that does happen just go back and dig out a little bit more expand your circle to make sure you get all the pieces in and the gap that you want now it's not going to be perfectly level in my case all the way around but between every two bricks it's a pretty flat surface so as long as you can stack another brick on that bridge you should be good to go you may notice that I'm not putting mortar in between these the weight of them is going to hold them in place just fine now if you want it to be here forever you can certainly add mortar just as if you were laying bricks but this is going to work [Music] all right you could stop right here and without using any special tools you've got a fire pit that would work great in your backyard you may notice that I didn't put any fire bricks on the inside of this a lot of people will and all that's gonna do is save these rocks from the heat of the fire for a little bit longer it may make this thing last 20 years instead of 15 years but I think the concrete's gonna be fine for me now you can stop right here like I said or you can make an awesome grill surface that looks like a TIE fighter we've got the fire pit all done now order to make a grill surface that we could drop on and then take off and I figured it'd be cool to make it look like a TIE fighter so for the center the actual grill area I got this replacement great there's only about seven bucks and it's gonna work really well so we're gonna start with that in the middle then we've got to figure out how big to make the wings and the rest of the structure we know that the fire pit is 46 inches to the center of the bricks so we're gonna make this little compass and from the center here we're gonna draw a big circle so now we've got that and we can build out the wings and the rest of the frame and just lay them here and not have to go inside and outside a whole bunch of times to get the size figured out I also went ahead and trace the grill surface so that I knew exactly where that center circle was from there I did a rough line across the center of this this doesn't have to be exact and then from that center point I started drawing out some lines to mimic the shapes of the wings obviously because I'm using chalk this is not a very exact thing but it really does help you visualize the angles and the sizes of everything relative to that center circle now I've got one side pretty much drawn out and that gives me all of the sizes that I need to cut for the steel and once I make this wing I can duplicate it and put it over there and then connect them now with this design I was working with a couple of constraints one was this piece that I found at the store I wanted to work around its size I also wanted to make sure that there was enough of a gap around the rest of it that I could put in more firewood without having to lift this whole thing off because if there's food on there it needs to stay where it is I decided to make this frame on a three-quarter inch square tubing so I added up the length of the three segments for the wing and then cut down a couple of pieces to that full length I measured out the three segments on each one of these pieces and then from my drawing on the floor I figured out the angle that each of these needed to sit at I used a digital angle gauge to find that angle and then split that angle in half I trace that angle on from the center point twice so when those two things add up they make the angle that I want to get to I transferred those marks around to the three sides of the piece and then used an angle grinder with a cut-off wheel to cut along those lines basically I'm just putting a V in each one of these pieces then I can use the bottom that's still connected as a pivot point to Bend [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I was about to start cutting a bunch of separate pieces to make the inside structure and I realized that the same thing I did for the wings will actually work for this inside piece as well so I already cut this one and I'm going to use that angle to hold it in place but now I'm going to find the angles where these pieces need to connect and then go cut another long piece of stock put the V cuts in it and then fold it while I was cutting these down to length I went ahead and put the correct angle on the end of them so that they would line up with the wings correctly but other than that the process was exactly the same for making these V cuts and bending the pieces up the angles were just a little bit different [Music] for one of these I tried to cut to pieces at the same time to make sure that the angles were cut the same way but unfortunately the cut wasn't as clean as I liked so I did the rest one at a time [Music] it was really handy to have the drawing on the floor because I can use it as a guide to modify the bends on my piece and once I got one of them in shape I used it as a template to bend the other one so that they were exactly the same [Music] while I had it laid out I'm marked where all the pieces would touch so that I could reassemble it on the floor to weld it together [Music] [Applause] there's no sponsor for this video but I wanted to let you know of some other ways that you can support I like to make stuff if you like what we do if you got a I like to make stuff calm you'll find links to our online store where we have digital plans and merch and a bunch of other stuff you'll find links to our patreon which is a great way to support I like to make stuff and you'll find links to podcasts and other content that we do that you may not be aware of so be sure to go check it out I like to make stuff calm [Music] [Applause] [Music] what are the downsides of using the cutoff wheel to make the mitered cuts is that if you don't get it quite right the gap ends up being bigger than you want that happened three times here and fortunately it doesn't really matter like these gaps are not pretty to look at but they're not really going to cause a problem the pieces are still attached and rather than spending the time to try to go back and fill them in with a weld I'm just gonna leave them there another good thing about having those cracks there is that you don't want a piece of metal that's going to be getting heat to be fully enclosed then you would have pressure buildup on the inside that would be a bad thing so these will actually kind of act as vents for those cross pieces that go across the TIE fighter I used a flap disk to clean up my welds just a little bit but mostly to remove the mill scale from all the surfaces before paint [Music] when you're painting something that's going to be a part of an engine or something that's going to be in a grill you want to use high heat paint a lot of those go up to six hundred and fifty degrees this one is Max and it goes up to 1,200 degrees so I think it should be good I got to cover this with paint [Music] I've got the frame finished I've got it all painted and ready to go I've got the grill surface set in just the right spot and now I have to attach those two things together one way to do that would be to put a little tack weld and each one of these corners just to hold it in place but to do that you would have to break the seal around this great surface now that's not a huge problem but it could make little spots for rust to show up later down the road so instead of that I'm going to use some jb weld this is a two-part epoxy type substance and when you mix it together you get a bond that is stronger than metal it's pretty wild stuff now this regular jb weld is rated for about 600 650 degrees so it may end up falling apart but there is a high heat version that I could always try out later if that happens I just couldn't find any of the high heat stuff here locally so you mix these two parts together on a surface and once you get them fully mixed then you just put them down in between the two pieces that you want to bond together [Music] this is a super simple fire pit that anybody can make it doesn't really take any tools and like I mentioned before we made it kind of temporary so we can change it or move it as we want to but you could put a little bit of mortar in here or in between each one you could put a small dab of construction adhesive that would hold everything in place I think we're also going to really enjoy this grill surface and if you don't want a Star Wars themed one you could just make some crossbars and it would work just the same I'm really excited to have this thing out here as we start to build out the rest of the fun stuff I have planned in our backyard so keep an eye out for some more videos there I'd love to know what you think about this one let me know down in the comments I've got lots of other project videos that you may be interested in check some of those out and don't forget to subscribe that's it for this one guys thanks for watching I'm gonna go make some s'mores so this is a super simple fire pit than any cut I'm gonna paint this with some high heat and I'm gonna paint with thee this is gonna stay in fine just place if you want just place stay and find this place

Channel: I Like To Make Stuff

Views: 1,267,421

Rating: 4.8495631 out of 5

Keywords: fire pit, outdoor fire pit, simple, star wars, tie fighter, grill, outdoor grill, diy, outdoors, how to, how-to, welding, darth vader, iltms, i like to make stuff, bob clagett, bob clagget, metalworking, iliketomakestuff, electronics, 3D printing, prop making, woodworking

Id: GTsmM7parCg

Length: 13min 37sec (817 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 09 2018