Bernie and I had a rather large gathering on our homestead in August of 2006. It wasa weekend event, and around 30 people camped in our yard. While trying to get together a menu to feed this crew for 3 days, we determined grilling outside would be the most efficient and economical choice. The fact that we own only 2 small grills was a bit of a delimna, until Bernie had the great idea of building a grill large enough to accomodate a fair amount of grilling at one time.

Naturally, we turned to our friend Tex who just so happens to be not only one of the most creative people we know, but also the only person we know who would consider this challenge a good time! Below is an account of what we started with and what we ended with - and the steps in between.

	We started with a large barrel that Tex had given us a while ago.
	Tex also managed to rustle up some heavy duty shelves from an industrial refrigerator to use as the grills..
	First, he drew a line the length of the barrel, and used a plazma cutter to get the cut started.
	Then he used a sawzall to make a cut the length of the barrel.
	He also used the sawsall to continue the line of the cut across the bottom of the barrel. Bernie and Tex decided not to cut the barrel exactly in half. I would guess they sawed off the top 1/4 or a little more. You'll see the portion they cut in a later picture.
	They welded these hinges on before the final cut so that lining them up wouldn't be such a pain.
	This is the barrel opened up on it's hinges. You can see how much of it they sawed in this picture.
	This side view shows the plug that was in the barrel originally. It will be used as a air intake so we can adjust the amount of air it gets while cooking.
	The legs are being made of fence posts from a cyclone fence. Who said we're not resoureful???
	Here it is - up on 4 legs! Now it's starting to look like a BBQ grill.
	Angle iron is used to make supports for the grills.
	One grill doesn't quite cover it. They'll need to cut a piece to fill in that spot.
	And here is the cut piece of grill to complete it.
	Here's the completed grill shelves. The bottom consists of leftover grill pieces from making the top. This will be used to hold the wood for the fire.
	The handle was made from a large dowel Tex had and some scrap metal he had laying around.
	And here it is with a chimney (corner post from an old cyclone fence) and leg supports made from angle iron. This puppy will certainly cook a few burgers and dogs. Total cost was a long day of work for the guys. Thanks Tex for all the work and all the scraps. You'll be the guest of honor for a nice BBQ meal for sure!
	Couldn't resist including a picture of Tex's latest project. He has more homemade trikes than I can count, but this one will be show quality, no question. It's just placed together here so he can see what he's working with, but you can look beyond the milk crates that hold up the front and see this bad boy is going to be awesome!
	7/23/06 - We took the grill out to the homestead this weekend and started a blazing fire out of timberwood to burn off the paint. That baby got hot!! Here's a picture of it smoking away. By the way, we grilled a couple of nice steaks on it afterwards - I can not tell you how wonderful they were. Totally cooked to perfection!
	I took this picture of Bernie chilling while we were waiting on the grill to get hot. Notice the big freaking pile of rocks in the foreground - we picked those up by hand out of the grassy area behind him. Notice the not-so-grassy area in front of the rocks - that's behind the house and an area we're working on growing grass. Our to-do list never ends.......