Second Life For Old Oil Tanks

[Jafo]

Last year I was driving down my road and I saw my neighbor dragging some stuff to the curb next to his homemade "Free" sign. There, in all its glory, was an old oil tank that was in his basement when he bought the house. These things are everywhere. I stopped and he helped me throw it into my truck. I am all about "second use" these days and I definitely saw something other than the scrapyard in this tanks future.

I called up a fabricator buddy of mine who owes me a few favors and had him cut the tank in half for me to use as a rotisserie/grill. We use this up at my yurt camp all the time for cookouts. It can hold up to a 100 pound pig, but most of the time we just throw a grate over it and cook chicken, ribs, etc., on it. There is simply no taste like it.

When we first got it open, there was no oil, but it did have quite a bit of oil sludge in it. No real effective way of cleaning this out other than burning it off, so for the next couple of nights we fired a bunch of wood through it until it was completely clean. We attached the uprights for the rotisserie, but otherwise it was ready to go. For the grate, I just use an old camping grate I bought online a few years ago.

Anyway, I figured I would share a few pics of it: