Last weekend I was visiting a good old friend of mine.
As a welcome present I brought “The best of MAKE” with me, since we both sometimes feel the need to do some craftsmanship.
Our original idea was to do a jar jet engine, but my friend came up with the idea of building a barbecue coal heating accelerator he has seen in the US.
The basic principle of the barbecue accelerator is pretty simple: You put some coal into a tube with a grid and ventilation holes near the bottom and light a fire underneath.
The smoke stack effect will take care of rest.

So we went off to a hardware store in the proximity, bought a stovepipe, some metal bars and angles and screws.

Building costs:

• stovepipe: 6€
• metal bars: 1€
• metal angles: 2,5€
• nuts and bolts: 1€
• sum: 10,5€

So the first tasks was to build the grid.
To do so, we simply drilled symmetrical holes in the stovepipe, cut the metal bars in the right length and fixed them at the correct position.

After that we cut out the ventilation holes underneath the grid, mounted the handle on the side and gave it a test run.

It took some minutes for the coal to burn just nicely and then we could pour the content into the barbecue grill.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 6th, 2008 at 1:53 pm and is filed under tech, analog, fire.