Oil Drum Handicraft

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YUKON STOVE

If you have access to a welding set and a little scrap iron, you can turn an oil drum into a great cooking stove and heating device for a small cabin or house.

First cut a 10-inch square out of one end of the barrel and use hinges or wire to fasten the metal back in place as a door. While you're at it, drill two holes in the flap and loop wire through them to make a handle.

Now—if the stove is to be used for cooking—you must cut a section right out of the cylinder and replace the curved surface with a flat panel that will become the cooking "top". Lay the drum on its side, hold a carpenter's level along the barrel and draw a straight reference line from the door end down twothirds of the container's length . . . or use the edge of a low table or similar object as a ruler.

With the help of a piece of string, measure 18 inches around the drum at the far end of the reference line, mark the surface along that curve and draw a second lengthwise line parallel to the first and a foot and a half away from it. The fourth side of your "rectangle" runs—not around the door end of the barrel—but straight across the upper part of the circle. Then, with a cutting torch, carefully remove the shape you've outlined.

Your stove will cook better and stay hot longer if you replace that cut-out section with a flat piece of one-quarter-inch iron plating that measures 16 by 22 inches. Weld this lid to the barrel and close the arched space at the back of the cooking area with an iron butt plate.

If you can't get an iron cover, carefully cut the end semi-circle off the piece you removed from the drum and weld that segment in place as a butt plate. Then flatten the curved section of barrel wall, weld it over the open space and trim off the excess steel.

You'll need an outlet for smoke, of course. Cut a five-inch hole in the rear third of the stove's top and weld a six-inch stovepipe over the opening. Continue the chimney up through the roof or out the wall.

A metal frame can then be made to support the heating unit, or the barrel can be set in a sandbox. (Lay a sheet of asbestos between the sand and the floor . . . and use the same material to protect any wall that's closer than 12 inches to the stove. These Yukon burners sometimes get red-hot.)

Obviously, if you need only a heater (and not a cooking surface), you can make one very simply by just cutting a door in one end of the drum and adding a stovepipe as described. You may find that the entrance must be propped open to allow the fire to draw air.

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