Making a Concrete Fire Pit the Right Way || Ultimate Fire Pit Build

this video was sponsored by skillshare well hey so i was sitting on my back porch the other day eating a bowl of rice krispies and bourbon when i looked out at this old fire pit here it's been here since we moved in it's not terrible but i had this idea and i wondered if i could do a poured concrete fire pit now let me preface this by saying i know absolutely nothing about pouring concrete outdoors i've never done it before in my life so this is kind of going to be a learning experience this whole video could be a terrible disaster there's really no way knowing except to get our hands dirty and get to work so let's try and make a poured concrete fire [Music] here's an idea let's watch jason build something he's never built before in his entire life or rather do something he's never done before in his entire life and that is poor concrete outside i had this crazy idea that i wanted to do a poured concrete fire pit so naturally i got a bunch of wood i figured first things first i needed to make some forms to pour my concrete into i mean if i didn't it would just go all over the yard that would just be silly so i ran out to the big box store and i got the cheapest plywood i could find now normally that would be osb or something like that but with lumber prices the way they are the cheapest plywood i could find was this pine faced sanded ply garbage they sell at home depot so after bringing the plywood into my shop i quickly made this little jig to trace out the shape of my form now i have my internal diameter which will be the size of my fire pit and then i have my external diameter which will just give me a little room to add some wood and stabilization to make my form not fall down next i marked my circle at the halfway point this would allow me to cut out exactly one half of the circle i'm gonna have to make four of these two for the bottom and two for the top two complete rings if you will then i tried to trace out the inside of my form on that same sheet of ply inside my half circle but i quickly realized that it wasn't gonna fit with me trying to get as much as i could out of a single sheet of ply so i'll just have to cut those out somewhere else down the road but we'll worry about that later after drawing two half circles on one sheet of ply i moved over to the other sheet and i drew two more half circles all the same size marking them exactly at the halfway point so i would know where they needed to be cut next i had to figure out how to cut these things out that's when i did something that was probably really stupid i decided that instead of using a router with a circle cutting jig i would just get the jigsaw and do it all by hand it's not that this didn't work it did it didn't need to be perfect for this purpose but as soon as i started cutting this with the jigsaw i just regretted it thinking man a router would have been much faster but did i stop did i change to the router like a smart person no like the i am i just persevered and cut the entire thing out with the jigsaw slowly and surely it got the job done but man was it a total pain in the butt but a little good news after cutting out all of my half circles i found that i had enough scrap ply left over to trace out the circle for the interior of my form now the outer circle is a 50 inch diameter and the internal circle is a 30 inch diameter which would give me 10 inches of concrete fire pit all the way around like a big concrete ring i mean i like my backyard and someone once told me if you like it then you should put a ring on it i think they were talking specifically about concrete fire pits when they said that so after tracing out and cutting one circle for my interior form i did the same thing for the second circle and then i moved over to my second sheet of plywood and cut out the remainder of my rings i'm not going to show you this entire process because well did i mention it was kind of crappy but pretty soon i had two circles for my interior form and four half circles for my exterior form see i'm just showing you all the little parts here but the one thing i hadn't done yet was cut right on that halfway mark so i needed to take all of my half circles over and chop them down to size this was a bit awkward doing it on the chop saw but hey if it's not awkward then it's not woodworking right no actually that's that's wrong woodworking should not be awkward unless you're in my shop anyways pretty soon i had all the pieces cut out that i needed to start constructing my form the only problem was at this point they were pretty two-dimensional and i needed to make them three dimensional so i went to the big box store and i bought about two million dollars worth of two by fours you think i'm joking but with lumber prices the way they are nowadays it was about that much and of course when you get two million dollars worth of lumber you cut it into small tiny pieces which is exactly what i did i took all of my pieces of 2x4 over to my pre-cut plywood half circle thingamabobs and i just kind of plopped them in place i didn't use a tape measure i just spaced them out to what looked even i mean they don't have to be perfect this is just a big thing you're gonna fill with concrete so don't waste too much time getting it exact then i marked the center of each one of those two by four braces onto my top piece of plywood then i set it on the bottom one and i transferred that mark to the bottom this would just allow me to get all of those braces lined up from top to bottom without having to use a silly tape measure i mean who even uses those anymore then i clamped the whole thing together and i just screwed my braces directly to my piece of plywood holding it nice and snug and you're probably never gonna believe this but after screwing it on one side i flipped the whole thing over and yep that's right call me crazy but i did the exact same thing on the other side until i had a very secure perfect half circle form thing in my what's it i really gotta learn what concrete people call this i think it's just called a form right the cool thing is i kind of accidentally discovered a design for a brand new piece of lawn [Music] furniture yeah this totally works i'm gonna definitely do this one day it's actually pretty darn comfortable i could i could sit in here all day [Music] but i won't because we got concrete to pour after doing one half circle yep i did another half circle because we didn't want a half circle we wanted a full circle then with my outer form circle put together it was time to start working on my interior form now i was originally just going to make this one solid circle but then i thought that's going to be a total pain to get out i mean i'm not going to be able to get my hands in there or work in there at all so i decided to cut my internal form into a ring to match my external form so i just quickly cut out a circle and then i had two rings for my internal form so i cut about three thousand dollars more in two by fours and i just started throwing them in there to create a similar but smaller version of my exterior form once again marking my plywood so that i could get everything lined back up and then screwing my two by fours to my plywood ring i gotta tell you this is the weirdest woodworking i have ever done before in my life i mean i'm spending all this time just a poor concrete over the entire thing it seems so wrong anyways i digress in no time i had a runaway internal form but i eventually caught it and plopped it in place and we were well on our way to pouring that delicious concrete now after looking at these forms for a while i decided that there's too many holes in there i had to line the inside with something or i was pretty sure the concrete would just leak out so i had an idea i found this 3 8 inch soffit material at the big box store and it's got this pre-printed wood grain pattern now i originally was going to use melamine so that it was perfectly smooth but i thought hey a printed wood grain fire pit actually sounds pretty cool so i went over the table saw and i ripped down a bunch of strips of the 3 8 inch material but just my luck 3 8 of an inch was just a little too thick for it to bend and fit the shape of the form i tried oh believe me i tried but it just wasn't happening so when in doubt curve it out as i always say so i went over to the chop saw and i set my miter saw to the trenching feature this allowed me to just cut part way through the back of all of my boards and i curved like a crazy man and when i just couldn't curve no more i took my board over and tested to see if now it would bend to fit the shape and what do you know it bent much better with all those kerfs cut in the back of it yeah i think it might work here's where i called another audible i was gonna hook the two rings together and then add this material to the inside staggering all my seams so they'd kind of blend together but i thought man that is gonna make it hard to pull apart so the easiest thing i could come up with was to do the internal form skinning is that what you call it in four separate sections yes i would have seams but by doing them in four even sections i'd have four even seams and i thought this would look the best and be the easiest to take apart so after clamping a few pieces in place i just screwed them on from the inside now you're probably thinking well wait that's the side with the concrete those screws are going to show up yeah i know i thought about that too but then i realized i'm doing this wood grain pattern so wouldn't it also look cool if there were screws imprinted into the concrete i don't know i thought it would be neat so i just screwed them on in nice uniform screw-like patterns it was by far the easiest way to attach them i could have come up with some slick method to attach them from the outside so there were no visible screws but i really think it's going to look good just just trust me go with me on this all right don't don't call me crazy until you you see the end result who knows i could be lying to myself it could look terrible but it's too late i already started we're just going with it after doing one section i did the exact same thing to the other section and pretty soon i had my entire form covered with fake 3 8 inch soffity wood man i hope i'm doing this right don't question yourself jason you got this buddy i know it's just when people are watching a video they expect you to know what you're doing yeah but but it's okay you're faking it really well and i'm i'm sure they'll just go along with it sorry sometimes i have internal dialogues with myself after getting my entire exterior form complete it was time to start working on the interior forum now i knew if i had a hard time making that 3 8 inch soffit material bend on the outside there was no way in heck i was going to get it to bend on the inside so i decided to switch to quarter inch melamine for the inside i also decided that it was probably going to be really hard to get this interior form out in one giant piece so i decided to cut it into three separate pieces in the hopes that i could get all the pieces out intact and not have to tear the form apart i mean if this works potentially i could use this form multiple times so after adding a few more brace pieces i just cut the form apart using a sawzall right in between my added brace pieces so that it came apart in three nice little sections and then of course when i had them apart i screwed them back together but the difference was i screwed them back together in a way that would be easy to take them apart all my screws were reachable from the inside so the plan was put it in in one piece and then after the concrete sets up take my screws out and just easily pop all three of those sections out i mean it's gonna work that way right come on tell me it's gonna work that way now because i cut it into three separate sections this meant that i had to add my quarter inch melamine in three separate sections because if i overlapped my seam with the melamine well that defeats the entire purpose of cutting it to three pieces so once again i just hooked on the skin for my internal form with screws leaving them purposely a little proud hoping that this would give them the opposite effect once i poured the concrete and make them look countersunk in the actual pour i don't know if this is gonna work i'm literally making all of this up as i go who knows i've never done this before and with that my form was complete i was pretty much ready to pour some concrete there was just one more thing i had to do and i knew i wouldn't be able to do it alone i needed some backup this video was sponsored by skillshare skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creators explore new skills deepen existing passions and get lost in creativity animation creative writing film and video fine arts graphic design illustration music photography ui ux design whatever that is web development just to name a few of the classes available on skillshare one class that i recently took and thoroughly enjoyed was productivity for creatives taught by thomas frank i think the biggest misunderstanding about productivity is that it's about getting more work done putting in more hours and that's not what it's about or video for instagram taught by jalees navias hi i'm hallease a digital storyteller and youtuber and ever since i bought my first camcorder at 12 i've been making videos whether you want to say a lot or a little filmmaking is a really strong form of communication it's curated specifically for learning meaning there are no ads and they're always launching new premium classes so you can stay focused and follow wherever your creativity takes you the first 1 000 of my subscribers to click the link in the description will get a free trial of premium membership so you can explore your creativity now let's go pour some concrete [Music] now obviously before we poured the new fire pit we had to get rid of the old fire pit so as reluctant as i was i had to call in my foreman for help he's a nice enough guy but he's just always on my case if i slow down for one second he just yells at me says get to work but he was nice enough he let me use his shovel which worked okay and i tried taking a nap and letting him do a little the work for once but he wasn't having any of that he kept yelling at me get up or you're fired get to work i'm not gonna stand for this and then he jumped on me ugh i'm in an abusive work environment after we scraped up the old fire pit we brought out the forms for the new fire pit once again the foreman made me do all the heavy lifting but we got the pieces in place then i scraped away some of the earth until it was nice and perfectly level from my outer form to my inner form then with everything pretty much in its proper place i threw in a few pieces of pvc pipe now these serve two functions they're all cut to the exact same length so they will make sure that that inner ring is perfectly positioned in the center of the outer ring but they'll also create holes through my concrete pour which will allow air to get in for the fire and water to get out when it rains i'm making a fire pit not a giant bird bath after all so with my pieces of pvc in place i screwed the two rings together to make one giant encased circle then i took some paste wax because i'm a woodworker and i don't know what you're supposed to put on concrete to make the concrete not stick to the form so i got what you put on wood to make wood not stick to wood and that is paste wax and i wiped it on everything then after doing some research on concrete fire pits i realized i needed to put something on the inside so that the concrete wouldn't get too hot and explode yes this is a thing that can happen so i bought these fire bricks on amazon they're rated for 2370 degrees and i use them to line the inside of my form right where the fire was going to be from what i read online this will protect the concrete from expanding due to the heat and like i said exploding which would be really cool and fun to watch but i don't want to ruin my fire pit then to hold my fire brick in place until i poured i just wrap some tape around it i mean why not now i don't own a concrete mixer nor did i want to rent one which meant that i was going to be mixing all of this concrete by hand and after doing the math i was going to need 25 bags of concrete that's a lot of concrete to mix by hand and i'm lazy i didn't want to do that so i decided i didn't need to pour that much concrete because this whole thing really doesn't need to be that thick if i could create some kind of mass inside the ring that would take up room i would have to pour less concrete which sounded like a good idea so within my form i hammered two rings of rebar and attached this wire mesh to the inner ring and the outer ring then in the void that created i filled the entire thing with just a crazy amount of rock i figured this would take up space so i didn't have to pour as much concrete and the rebar and mesh would hopefully add a little strength to the concrete ring itself and boom just like that i was ready to pour some concrete i've got my outer ring i've got my internal mesh stone structure i've got my fire brick to protect against heat and i've got my internal form what else could you need to pour concrete oh yeah that's right almost forgot i have to actually mix the concrete believe it or not this is the first time i have ever mixed just standard concrete with water and a hoe like you see people do on tv so i didn't really know what i was doing i just started adding water until it looked like a good concrete consistency and when i reached that point i wheeled it over to the fire pit and i just started shoveling it in my plan was to fill up that internal void between the fire brick and the stone first once i did that i vibrated the crud out of it with a reciprocating saw without a blade on it i'd add a little concrete i'd vibrate i'd add some more concrete i'd vibrate you get the point i quickly realized that my max was three bags at a time that i could adequately mix without overflowing my little pole cart so i'd mix three bags go over and fill up as much as i could and vibrate some more the vibrating served two functions it got all the air bubbles out of the concrete and it worked all the concrete down into every little crack and crevice into the mesh and between all the stone once i filled up that internal void i started working on the external void pouring concrete and vibrating pouring concrete and vibrating i have to tell you i was ridiculously sore after mixing all this concrete and vibrating for an entire morning it wasn't fun next time i'm renting a flippin concrete mixer ain't got time for this all in all i think it took me right around oh maybe an hour and 20 minutes to mix all the concrete and get it in there after doing the math for my ring and the amount of space that i removed with the stones i figured i'd need 18 bags of concrete now this is an absolute miracle and it has never happened to me before in buying lumber so maybe i should switch to concrete but i used exactly and i mean exactly 18 bags to fill up this thing gosh i love it when that happens so after getting it completely full to the very top i vibrated it one last time really well and then i screeded the top notice i'm saying screed in my concrete countertop video i said screet with a t and boy did you guys not like that i got a lot of comments telling me that it was screed not screed so i've learned from my mistakes all right i do read the comments and i know now that it's screed wait is it screed or screed i can't remember pretty sure it's screed don't hate me once it was screeded i floated the top with a plasma float because i guess that's a thing then i didn't show you guys this but after letting it sit up for a while i made this little stamp out of a scrap piece of that soffit material and i thought if the sides are going to have a wood grain on it then the top should probably have wood grain on it too now i didn't know if this was gonna work or not i never stamped concrete a day in my life and who knows if a scrap piece of wood would even work for a stamp but what do you know it worked perfect my stamp was big enough to do one quarter at a time so i just slowly worked my way around all four sides until it was completely stamped then after letting it dry just a little bit longer i covered the whole thing in plastic just to slow down the curing process then the next day a good oh 20 to 30 hours later more like 30 hours later i came out to remove the forms the outer forms were super easy other than my drill battery not wanting to work all i had to do was pop out the screws on the outer form and hopefully just pull it apart really didn't know if that paste wax was going to do its job or not so i kind of pried apart and i pulled and [Music] boom goes the dynamite i gotta say i'm no expert in concrete so i don't know exactly what it's supposed to look like but it looked pretty darn good to me the wood grain on the inside of the forms showed through in the concrete better than i could have hoped for i mean it looked awesome the only issue i had was with the interior form that was not as easy to remove as i hoped it would be i took out the screws like i had planned to separate the form into three separate pieces that all went well i mean the screws came right out as they should but then i pulled hoping that the form would slide up nice and easy and it didn't this is when i decided there was only one thing to do and that was to well rip the internal form apart now luckily because i screwed the top plywood parts of the form in place i was able to access those screws and unscrew the top part of the form so once i got all those screws out i used a pry bar to pry the plywood third of a ring things away then i just started ripping out two by fours the best i could prying a little here ripping a little there until i got most of the internal form structure removed once i had all the plywood off the top and as many of the braces as i could get out remember some of those braces are screwed directly to the melamine i just started pulling and fortunately the forms eventually came out and after i got one section out well the other sections came out super easy see just hit it with a hammer a little bit and plop hit it with a hammer a little bit and plop now i know what you're thinking man that fire brick with the concrete smeared all over it looks horrible well don't worry i'm gonna clean it up a little bit i just took a hammer and whacked all the concrete that had dripped down in between the bricks and the form this is just really thin pieces of concrete so it came right off with a little help from the hammer and chisel once i got all the concrete removed down low i used a chisel just to kind of follow a line at the top of the brick and make a little bit of a smoother transition from concrete onto the fire brick with that done i wanted to see if i could get these pieces of pvc out i fully expected this to be a pain and maybe not even be able to pull them out but they slid right out must have been all that paste wax i lubed them up with i mean i was a little disappointed because i thought it would be fun to watch them melt into nothingness but that would probably be bad for the environment so with my pvc removed and my bricks cleaned up on the inside there was just a few more things left to do to make it look all pretty i happen to have a few bags of the stone left over that i used for the inside of the fire pit so i figured what the hey i might as well spread it around the outside and pretend like i'm a landscaper but it really did clean it up much nicer than just the ring of bare dirt then the easiest thing i did to make this thing just pop was i purchased this pre-made fire pit ring insert these are literally available at lowe's or home depot they just sell them with all the stone and it slid perfectly in the top of the fire pit and it covered up that ugly transition from fire brick to concrete and just really made the whole thing pop and i was done hey what do you know i did it it worked this thing turned out better than i could have even hoped for i got my layer of fire brick around the inside and i got this stock metal fire pit insert at lowe's i think this thing's supposed to stand up to heat well the fire brick's supposed to stand up to heat up to 4 000 degrees or something crazy like that no that's not right 2300 anyways it's a lot so hopefully this cement will stand up great over time to a fire now the downside to this video is i can't show you the pit with the fire in there i want to let this concrete completely cure up and that's going to take about a month so i'm not going to put a fire in here for at least 30 days and then i will give it its maiden voyage but i didn't want to make you wait that long for the video so this is as far as you will be able to see if you want to see updates on this fire pit and how it lasts the test of time make sure to follow me on instagram i will definitely post some updates there if you're not doing so maybe join my patreon there's a link in the video description along with all the products and supplies i used in this video as always thanks for watching you

Channel: Bourbon Moth Woodworking

Views: 1,470,609

Rating: 4.8581123 out of 5

Keywords: fire pit, diy fire pit, how to build a fire pit, fire pit ideas, concrete fire pit, how to, building a fire pit, fire pit diy, do it yourself, diy firepit, backyard fire pit, fire pits, backyard makeover, home improvement, diy smokeless fire pit, smokeless fire pit, fire pit construction, ultimate fire pit, concrete fire pit the right way, easy concrete fire pit, fire pit out of concrete, bourbonmoth, woodworking, ultimate backyard, backyard upgrade, easy fire pit upgrade

Id: 39my012JAL8

Length: 33min 0sec (1980 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021