cutting old gas bottle

Remove the valve, _fill_ with water, allow to stand for a few hours, empty water, cut away.

Mike Harding

How does one make a bbq from an old gas bottle please ?

Yep, hose out with water and cut away. A mate & I used to make slow combustion stoves out of the large ones that are used to refill bottles at servos... every time you took a grinder to them they stunk of "odourant" the stuff they put in to maker LPG smell...

Gday,
To answer your question...Yes the same issuses as cutting a fuel drum..
Be bloody careful and when you think you have degassed it....do it again!

Cheers

Those BBQs are great. I first saw one in use a few years while camping beside a Tassie lake. A man rolled in in a mega dollar motor home that must have had every possible cooking appliance inside it yet he pulled out this old home made gas bottle oven and proceeded to cook a beautiful roast chicken and vegetables in it.

I measured and photgaphed it and made my own quite easily.

I noticed the one shown on Barry Breaden's site uses a length of open exhaust pipe for a chimney. The Tassie one had a larger diameter pipe with a "throttle valve" type of disc in it to control the air flow. I found an old Falcon driveshaft that I happened to have lying around was the right diameter (67 mm inside) so I used that. It was a simple matter to cut a disc out of sheet metal and pivot it on a piece of 6 mm steel rod split with a hacksaw.

I have another bottle and intend making one with a gas burner ring in the bottom and a non cumbustable insulating tea cosy style of cover to slip over it. I am hoping I can get it going with a very small flame and minimal gas consumption, yet still have a very hot oven inside. That is the theory anyway.

I prefer to use a fire but this one should work well on fire restriction days.

Brian

I can only say ............. BE CAREFUL yes you can hose it out however there still MAYBE some residue of LPG which if hit with a grinder will give you a moment of shear excitement.

Yake the valve group outn and wash, long stick with lit match over open end of cylinder if theres any gas inside it will ignite and after that will be fine. I would do outside of the house lol

As for being possibly called a safety drone ........... bleep YEAH I can live with that.

I intend on making a BBQ with a gas cylinder and thats my approach.

In the end your call which way you do it decide :)

Brian

Just as a follow up to that last post: all I did with the bottle was leave it upside down out in the sun and kept blowing it out with compressed air every half an hour or so for a couple of hours while I was doing other things. The thing with LPG is it is present in the bottle in liquid form but it only remains a liquid while it is under pressure in a sealed container or below minus 42 degrees C. The moment the valve is left open until the gas stops coming out or it is removed completely, then the bottle is not sealed anymore and any remaining traces of liquid gas will vaporise. It can't not vaporise under those conditions. With the bottle upside down, any of the heavier than air vapour that might be left in the bottle will fall out and the compressed air just makes sure of it.

The smell of gas is not a true indication of the presence of gas. I noticed for many weeks after cutting and welding my bottle, I could still smell it as I walked past it in the garage. The smell comes from the additive that makes the normally odourless gas detectable.

This method does not apply to petrol tanks. If you can smell petrol then there is petrol present. I cut a Commodore tank in half recently. I drained it, opened every opening in it and once again left in the sun. I could easily smell petrol around it. I put compressed air through it everytime I thought of it for a couple of days and each time I noticed the petrol smell was diminishing. It eventually reached the stage where I could not smell anything. No smell means no petrol so I was able to cut it with a grinder without any problems.

I had plenty of time on my hands then but if I had to drain and cut it immediately then I would have blown it out a few times at about fifteen minute intervals and cut it while it was almost completly filled with water.

Brian

Nup , no problems.

Here is mine



Left the valve open for a few days. Washed it out.

Cut

The only reason I say to be careful is simple ........ my mate did the wash out thing for ages let it stand upside etc etc next day hooked up the grinder but decided to light a match over the opening of the cylinder ........ well as he put it, it was over in a whooosh and a FLASH.

As he said if he started with the grinder and it ingited then the flash would partly be directed at him.

Why it flashed, don't know could be a number of reasons so I just say be careful is all, easier to be safe than sorry.

He made a couple for his place and uses his camp ovens in them. I intend on making a couple for my place as well.

Mind you I laughed big time when he told me about it .... what are mates for :)

Brian