Post by WDB on Sept 23, 2016 8:21:12 GMT
I have 250 bricks stacked neatly outside my back door, surplus from a friend's home extension project. They are standard size but in an 'engineering' pattern, with vertical holes running through them.
My task is to turn them into a barbecue, the most versatile and capable I can manage. But what is that? Plans I've found online tend to be uninspiring designs that don't add much to the kind of thing I could just buy at Homebase, so it's all got a bit stalled for lack of ideas.
Then on Wednesday I heard food writer Tim Hayward talking about the pleasure of cooking with flames and smoke and he got me thinking again. (You can hear some of what he said in The Kitchen Cabinet on R4 at 10.30 on 1 October.) What he described was quite simple: essentially a fire table consisting of a concrete slab on brick legs, on which can sit various devices for supporting and turning food above or alongside the heat.
So now I'm doing thought experiments on that idea. Since I'm going to carve a piece out of the lawn to accommodate the structure, the first task is to get a concrete pad laid for it to stand on. The contractor who did the base for our shed can do that But if I want a concrete top too, I suppose I could build one out of slabs but it would seem more sensible and durable to have one cast in one piece. I've not asked him but I expect my contractor could do that too - something like 1500x750x75mm.
This could stand on three or four brick piers, between which I could fit floored cupboards for fuel and equipment. And on top I could design a back wall that will let me support grills and spits at various heights, while leaving the fire table unobstructed to let me deploy coals and logs wherever I like.
More to do, of course, but does this sound practical in engineering terms?
My task is to turn them into a barbecue, the most versatile and capable I can manage. But what is that? Plans I've found online tend to be uninspiring designs that don't add much to the kind of thing I could just buy at Homebase, so it's all got a bit stalled for lack of ideas.
Then on Wednesday I heard food writer Tim Hayward talking about the pleasure of cooking with flames and smoke and he got me thinking again. (You can hear some of what he said in The Kitchen Cabinet on R4 at 10.30 on 1 October.) What he described was quite simple: essentially a fire table consisting of a concrete slab on brick legs, on which can sit various devices for supporting and turning food above or alongside the heat.
So now I'm doing thought experiments on that idea. Since I'm going to carve a piece out of the lawn to accommodate the structure, the first task is to get a concrete pad laid for it to stand on. The contractor who did the base for our shed can do that But if I want a concrete top too, I suppose I could build one out of slabs but it would seem more sensible and durable to have one cast in one piece. I've not asked him but I expect my contractor could do that too - something like 1500x750x75mm.
This could stand on three or four brick piers, between which I could fit floored cupboards for fuel and equipment. And on top I could design a back wall that will let me support grills and spits at various heights, while leaving the fire table unobstructed to let me deploy coals and logs wherever I like.
More to do, of course, but does this sound practical in engineering terms?
