Making a charcoal kiln from an oil drum

Last night we started on making one of our charcoal kilns. I'm going to try two designs, the first is a basic one, cutting the top off the barrel and making a ledge for it to sit in. The base of the barrel has holes in it to let the air in while it is supported on bricks, then the bricks are removed and it can be sealed around the base to exclude the air once the charcoal is done. I'll do some photos when we use it...

First though, we had to rescue a caterpillar that had taken up residence:

Then I set about cutting the top off, by drilling some holes to get started and then going in with a pair of tin snips:
I still need to make some extra holes in the bottom, but first I had to make a fire in it to burn out any oil residues. This was a bit nasty, so we did it at the end of the evening, to try and avoid the smoke upsetting anyone...
More on this:
finishing making the kiln
the results

Mike