Oil barrel Pizza Oven (how to make one)

After a semi successful attempt at a clay pizza oven with captain and the duke, I decided the best way to make a portable oven was in steel. The shape came in the form of an empty oil barrel, this blog will take you through how I made it.
Credit to Joe P and Bartosz for the mad welding and oil barrel acquisition skills.
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1. Secure an oil barrel, I picked mine up for free, most farms will have them lying around and will be happy for you to take them!

2. The first step is to make it stand on its side, I folded some 2mm steel sheet into two U shapes and sat them on top of the barrel. I bridged them with a couple of lengths of steel angle (40x40mm) to give a stable base and welded them in place.

3. Next is the chimney, I used a 6" stove pipe for this. I had a wood burner fitted recently and it came with a length of stove pipe for free which I didn't use. First mark out the hole and cut out, I used a plasma cutter but you could chain drill around the perimeter and use a file/hacksaw or even tin snips. Cut the stove pipe to around 400 mm long and weld it to the top of the barrel. The coating on the stove pipe is enamel which means it is rock hard, use a stone angle grinding disc to remove the enamel where it needs to be welded.

I also cut the opening whilst the plasma cutter was on, again you could use hand tools or an angle grinder to do this.

4. Now to put in the base which will take the fire and the pizzas. First drill 3 x 10mm holes down each side just lower than the level as the bottom of the opening. Insert 10mm rod or studding across the width of the barrel. These will need to be welded each side and trimmed off, alternatively if you used stud put a nut on each end, see the pic below where the rods are still sticking out prior to being welded.

5. You can then measure the inside and cut a sheet of steel to fit, you will need to cut it in half lengthways in order to get it inside, they should be a good fit so nothing can fall down the gap, and so it can be welded.

6. I was concerned that the steel would be too thin above the fire area and would just burn through, my solution to this was to put some more steel over the areas directly over the fire, again using 2mm sheet steel I folded some covers to weld over the top. As I didn't have any steel rollers I used a metal bender to do a series of folds as close to the shape as I could.

Cut a steel sheet to fit inside

7. Kiln shelves
The first stage was to lay some kiln shelf sections in the base to take the fire and the pizzas, I used what I had from the first pizza oven and managed to tessellate them together quite neatly.

I plan to replace these at some stage as it is best not to have any joins in the area that you will use to cook the pizza. If there any joins they tend to catch on the Pizza peel as you move the pizza in and out of the oven.

8. The test burn
This shows the test burn, the smoke you can see is the paint burning off. make sure you have a sturdy steel or stone/brick base as there is some serous heat generated.

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​9. The Insulation

There is a massive amount of heat loss through the top of the Oven, we laid a piece of fibreglass insulation over the top as a temporary measure to see how it worked. You can just see the oven thermometer in the picture, it is off the scale!

10. The cook up!

The test cook was the day before my brother's wedding, the family were all over so Andy and Joel (captain and the duke) were on cooking duty see pics below of Andy in action!
By all accounts the pizzas where great!

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11. the plan now is to build a permanent base, better insulation and perhaps build a brick arch over the top, or perhaps just stick it in the bcd garden and await another pizza party...