Fire! Fire!

Yesterday was my last welding class.  After 8 weeks of class, I am not sure what I am going to do with myself next saturday morning.  Everyone else in the class made a cute little wind chime for their last project, I went out on my own with something bigger.

Karen and I met this artist several years ago who made artsy fire pits with a pattern cut into the top of them.  Since we first met him, his price has increased 3x, to over $1500.  I figured out that his pits started with the half dome end cap off of a chemical storage/LP tank, so I decided to make my own instead.  It took some searching, but I finally found a local chemical supply company that had a few end caps piled up behind their building.  After a few phone calls, I finally found someone there who was willing to sell one and help load it into a truck. 

This thing is pretty big, 42" diameter and is heavy too since it is thick steel.  I drew out a pattern to cut, based on the artist's design that Karen liked, and hauled it to class in a work truck.  I had already told the instructor what I wanted to do for my final project, but he seemed to start having second thoughts on the project when he saw it.  He said that I probably should have brought it in weeks ago to start working on it.  It was obvious that he didn't think I'd get it done in 4 hours, I remained positive and thought that I could at least complete the cutting.

Here it is with the pattern drawn on it:

In hindsight, I should have ground off all the paint when I got it.  I quickly learned that as soon as a lot of heat was applied, the paint curled up like crazy, taking the pattern with it.  Not good!  I ended up basically free handing the cutting, so it didn't turn out quite as consistant as I would have wanted.  However, since it is the first time I have tackled a big cutting project like this,  I think it turned out pretty good. 

It ended up taking the whole class period to cut out the pattern with the torch and plasma cutter,  but I was able to finish.  I didn't have time to use a grinder to clean up the edges, I will have do that at home later on.  We were having some friends over for dinner last night and Karen was planning to do smores for dessert, so I threw a quick coat of black high temp paint on it to clean it up the outside.  Here it is out on the gravel pad that will eventually be a brick patio:

I picked up some fire wood and got to entertain my inner pyro last night... Fire! Fire!