'Old Blue' - our wood burning stove

Taking a bit more inspiration from Mr Weston's book we decided to build a wood burner like his 'Bertha'. So a few weekends ago, Greg and I set out to find an oil barrel for the purpose. One that we could have for free naturally!
15 Minutes later having visited one garage, he had just the thing. It's amazing how people react if we get the chance to explain what we're doing. Most people seem to get it completely and help us in every way they can, maybe there's a bit of everyone that wishes they were doing something like this so it fires their imagination? I don't know, either way it makes scavenging easier when folks are receptive to the idea! The barrel we got was old and blue, so we christened it 'Old Blue', which seems like a male name so he's a him.

So we got Old Blue home and proceeded to cut his lid off:

Once this was done we needed to burn him out a bit to clear out any remaining oil or chemicals to make him safe for eventual indoor use.

 We had a small fire just to clear him out.

Then I cut the door and bottom opening out, and immediately realised I'd cut them the wrong way round! D'oh! As the bottom of the barrel eventually becomes the top of the stove, my mind had not factored that in and I guess I was just a bit grinder happy. Never mind, nothing that can't be fixed with a welder. I'll simply cut out the surround of the smaller hole and weld it in to the bigger hole, thus swapping the two size holes around. It'll be good welding practice for me anyway.

Whoops!

So I then decided to have a proper burn in him to get rid of as much paint as possible to help with welding and also to make repainting him with spray on stove paint easier. Our friend Andy helped with this as got Old Blue VERY hot indeed!

Old Blue warming up nicely! 

He kept us warm well into the night too. 

 Now I need to get my welder out and finish him off, progress will be blogged as it occurs.......