-Making A Concrete FIRE PIT _ from a washing machine drum.

So a couple months ago I was riding through my neighborhood and I happened to see this washing machine drum on the side of the road and I had to have it. My first thought was to make a raised fire pit that had a few features on it. For the time being I nixed that idea but it may be a future project. This ended up being a really cool project. Loved the way it came out. At the end of the video I'm going to let you guys know what my thoughts about this project is and I also want to thank this week's sponsor World of Warships for sponsoring this week's video. To check them out click on the link down in the video description and use code PLAYWARSHIP2018 to redeem some cool prizes. For this project I used a three quarter inch thick melamine. This will be the foundation of the concrete mold. Depends on if a project is pressing or not. I would put more time into thinking and planning that way execution can go a whole lot smoother. My thinking was to route a few circles in the base. This will allow me to worry about supporting the form versus the actual shape. Turns out this hole saw is the same size as my router base. So making this quick jig is going to allow me to make quick circles and really simple because I can just drop my router right in the hole and not necessarily have to attach the router. I routed the holes till it was about three eighths of an inch deep. So I made multiple paths to get there and since I need two of these I drilled out a second hole in the jig and then routed a larger hole in the base. I ripped down a few pieces of white hardboard to 12 inch in width. In order to find the distance around the circle I needed to do some math. I measured the distance across the circle then times it times pi which is 3.14. I closed off the circle by screwing both ends to a piece of scrap wood to the inside. I couldn't quite think of a better option so I used tape to cover the screw heads. Now the smaller the circle is the harder it's going to be to bend this whiteboard. So the second circle I created was a whole lot easier to cooperate with. When rolled out this second circle is about 11 feet in length. The only way for me to get this circle to be big enough is by attaching an additional piece which will now give me two seams. And the larger circle went in a whole lot easier than the first one. To wrap this up I'm going to add support on the outside of the large circle and support on the inside of the small circle. As a way to prevent cement from getting down in the crack I used silicone and filled in the cracks which not only fixed that problem but also add a bit of a round over on the edge. So me and Kenneth actually live in the same neighborhood and he's part of the southeast region with Rapidset. He's going to be giving me some hands-on experience with the product. So what you got here what is this? So this is our flow control. What this does is it increases fluidity of the product and increases the compression strength. So what it does is breaks up all the aggregates in the concrete mix or cement also it can flow a lot better get details especially when you're pouring molds like this you want to have something to break up those aggregates and get into those cracks and crevices. This is to be mixed in with the powder as I'm mixing the concrete I'll mix in the flow control powder with a strong mug mixer here. I'm going to mix the product for 45 to 60 seconds. Add our flow control in there down at the bottom of the bucket. Stir those around. Just like that. As that's setting we're going to mix up another bag and pour right on top of it. Product CSA formula calcium sulfide aluminide. You want to have a loose mix because you're pouring into a mold. You want to get all cracks crevices everything filled that will help with your finishing work once we flip the mold over. There'll be a lot less work involved with a nice loose mix that can get in all the cracks and crevices and still be at 3000 psi in one hour. The minute we opened the first bag it was go time there was no time to waste and within 15 minutes this thing's already starting to set. We installed a white grid mainly because I made it but I was told that I didn't need it because this mix can support form up to two feet thick without rebar. Now we use two different mix for this pour. To my understanding we could have went with either however combining the two and alternating each pour gave us more volume. This form was 36 inch wide by 12 inch high with an eight inch thick wall so I wanted to add a dark line going around the bottom of the fire pit. Now because we were moving so fast I almost forgot to add the pigment. On top of that I forgot to shake the bottle so the color didn't come out as dark as I liked and by the time I poured all the mix out I realized there was still stuff left in the bottom. Now this didn't make or break the design from a design aesthetic I just missed out on the opportunity to get something I wanted. After the pour was complete we had to keep water on this for the next four to five minutes to an hour. Through the curing process this was putting off an enormous amount of heat it's almost like putting your hand on a hot hood during the summer. So it's been well over an hour now and it should be a good time to go ahead and remove the mold. So we have about an hour and 40 minutes tied up into this section of the project from the time we open up the first bag of cement mix to the time we remove the mold. This thing is in the neighborhood of 450 pounds so it's pretty heavy. We were able to hoist it up and then roll it into a location that I thought I wanted it. After Kenneth left I realized that this probably wasn't the most practical location so this meant that I had to move this thing on my own and I did it with the power of leverage and did it safely in a way that I didn't hurt myself so that was a really tough task to take on. And before I take you back to the project here's a quick word from today's sponsor. World of Warship is a massive online multiplayer game. Since launch they've added over 200 ships in eight different nations which is insane because it can take up the six months to create a ship entirely from scratch and that's because they put a ton of detail in each ship. And with over 7 million players worldwide dive into the world of naval battles and fight with epic battleships. Discover ways to attack ships and watch out for hints so you don't waste your ammo. Understand the game mechanics and that will play a huge role in becoming the fearless hunter in the waters. Now that we're back to the project I'm going to sand the drum down so I can apply paint to a clean surface. I'm going to use a spray paint that's Now you'd use this if you were repainting your barbecue grill or any kind of high temperature application. Now you'd only apply this on the outside. The first location I placed this just wasn't going to work out so I had to relocate this and I ended up using the power of leverage where I was able to hoist this up and then I could roll it to the back of the house. After removing soar from the fire pit opening I compacted the ground and added rocks and a cinder block for drainage. The next thing to do was to drop the drum in and level it. Overall I love the way the project came out however I'm going to convert it to a gas fire pit at some point. I'm not a big fan of the wood burning fire pit. I think it's a little hard to light the wood and I just don't want to deal with that. So I am a little bummed that I couldn't get you guys some night footage. The rain was a constant problem on and off. I only have about three hours worth of burn time with this so I can't give you a true evaluation on how this would actually hold up in the heat. So the biggest recommendation I can give you is do not put fire directly inside of the concrete form because that's going to cause a problem. It would crack the concrete and in some cases it could possibly explode. The mix I'm using is only rated at 300 degrees Fahrenheit. The main reason I used this product was because of the rapid cure time. So once I do the conversion everything is going to stay the same as it is now. The only addition is I may add a bowl that goes above the fire pit itself so that the flames are a bit higher. Again big thanks to the World of Warships for sponsoring today's video. Be sure to click on the link down in the video description to check out their game and you can also use code PLAYWARSHIP2018 to redeem your free prizes.