THE SCRAP CHARCOAL GRILL
Here is one of those little side projects that I decided to take on just to be able to keep my improvisation abilities sharp and at the same time make use of something that we picked up for free. As the title states, that free item was a scrapped charcoal grill. We passed by a neighbor one day and saw this thing sitting at the road next to the other garbage they laid out. At first we picked it up with the express intent on adding it to the rest of the outgoing scrap but after giving it a once over, it looked like it really wasn't too far gone that I couldn't resurrect it. The cheap plastic wheels on the bottom were in bad shape with one melted pretty badly and the other one just worse for wear. The grill body, which was a cylindrical shape like a can, had a rusted out damper and the side where the damper was at was rusted fairly enough. The charcoal grate was rusted to hell and the cooking surface was pretty rough as well. The rest of the grill body was covered in surface rust.
What this would mean is that I would have to replace the wheels on the legs, then scrape the side, removing the rusted damper and any loose rust/metal and weld a patch in place then fabricate some type of damper for later use. I would then have to scrub the inside to rid the inside of loose rust and dirt and the outside to rid it of the layer of surface rust prior to painting. Lastly I would spray paint the outside body with high temperature paint, and hit the legs and staging shelf on the side with regular black paint. I got started with this work and got it done pretty good.
What this would mean is that I would have to replace the wheels on the legs, then scrape the side, removing the rusted damper and any loose rust/metal and weld a patch in place then fabricate some type of damper for later use. I would then have to scrub the inside to rid the inside of loose rust and dirt and the outside to rid it of the layer of surface rust prior to painting. Lastly I would spray paint the outside body with high temperature paint, and hit the legs and staging shelf on the side with regular black paint. I got started with this work and got it done pretty good.
Patch fitted in place. The patch came from a piece of thinner sheet metal cut from a larger stock that was in our pile of scrap metal. I will have to carefully fan the welder over the edge of the patch metal so as to not expose any one spot to too much arc that will result in the metal vaporizing and creating a hole that will need to be further filled in with welding wire slag.
I managed to have a grate that we salvaged from another trash pickup that just happened to fit pretty good in the bottom of the grill to serve as the charcoal grate. The cooking grate is being kept for the time in order to be able to match it up to another for replacement either through purchase or cutting from larger stock.
With that the grill has been officially resurrected. Even though the cooking grate isn't in the best of shape, it will probably allow us to get some cooking time in before it degrades to the point that we will have no choice but to replace it. I may end up having to cut a replacement from a larger piece of grating material, we'll figure that out as resources present themselves. As for the rest of the grill, I'll probably have to conduct a burn in the thing to help cure the high temperature paint better. Other than that, we will try to cover up or otherwise protect this grill so it can last longer and not degrade any more from the elements. This is one of the reasons for us starting the construction of the utility/powered equipment garage, to store things like this that need protection from the elements. But barring that, we now have a charcoal grill, ready for use that really didn't cost us anything due to the fact that besides the grill being a trash picking, the materials that I used to fix this thing were already on site and didn't cost me anything. Materials that are already on site in storage have already been paid for and for all intents are "lost" money so using them for something like this is a lot better than having the same materials sit around to the point that they too rust away and end up being scrapped. It is projects like these that The Improvisation Center is all about, taking what's available and making due to meet a goal.
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