Beach house "Braai"
Posted: 16 Sep 2016, 08:10
As you may know for us South Africans a barbecue (or more accurately a braai) is not so much a method of getting food cooked, but more of an occasion and a lifestyle! . The braai (I will be referring to the proper term from here on in ) at our family beach house is probably about 40 years old and has been mended many times each time with less success. So my dad, brother, sisters boyfriend and I decided it was high time for a new braai and and a nice little side project we can work on ourselves. There are certain constraints here which play a pivotal role in the basic design:
- Must be rust resistant (we didn't use any hollow steel)
- We have to disassemble for transport to the seaside.
General construction is a 16" steel wheel rim on a a frame with wheels for mobility. The grill is height adjustable.
Most of the build is naturally in steel, but the trimmings are all in wood and have fallen on me to make (time to grow some skills!)
Here are some pics of the build to give you a general idea:
The fire will be housed in the rim (there is a separate grid that fits inside the rim to avoid loosing wood/charcoal through the bottom). Note the lugs welded to the outside of the wheel for the grid legs to stand on.
The main grid is hexagonal with 3 long legs and 3 short legs, the grid can also be rotated to sit flush on the rim.
The frame after primer, the bottom halves of the frame legs are not bolted on yet. We noticed after bolting on the legs the overall height is actually more that was needed, this is an unfortunate by product of designing by committee...
Rim on the frame with the grid on top.
Grid on the short legs.
Grid on the long legs.
We still need a good way of changing over from long to short legs while the braai is in use, I'm still scratching my head on that one...
Now for the actual wood working part, we added 2 angle irons to the back of the frame to act as handles (similar to a wheel barrow) and I will be making the wooden grips for these and then a small table top for spices etc.
From my table saw bench build you may know that I have a lot of recycled wood at hand. The initial idea was to use 38x38 "brandering" for the handles, but since I have loads of Meranti at hand i thought it would be much nicer to use this. The only problem was it was in the form of paneling from an old garage door, so i would have to try my hand at cutting the panel in strips and then laminating to get the proper profile. It was rather a struggle to get all the old varnish/beeswax and other gunk off of the panel, but I eventually managed to get a fairly clean surface. I cut the panel into 40mm wide strips.
Here are the strips ready for gluing.
Glued and clamped.
I also started on the table top, the strips for this was cut to 20mm wide and turned sideways, I did a quick mock up just to see if the general idea would work (finished size will be 520x200mm)
Thanks for looking!
- Must be rust resistant (we didn't use any hollow steel)
- We have to disassemble for transport to the seaside.
General construction is a 16" steel wheel rim on a a frame with wheels for mobility. The grill is height adjustable.
Most of the build is naturally in steel, but the trimmings are all in wood and have fallen on me to make (time to grow some skills!)
Here are some pics of the build to give you a general idea:
The fire will be housed in the rim (there is a separate grid that fits inside the rim to avoid loosing wood/charcoal through the bottom). Note the lugs welded to the outside of the wheel for the grid legs to stand on.
The main grid is hexagonal with 3 long legs and 3 short legs, the grid can also be rotated to sit flush on the rim.
The frame after primer, the bottom halves of the frame legs are not bolted on yet. We noticed after bolting on the legs the overall height is actually more that was needed, this is an unfortunate by product of designing by committee...
Rim on the frame with the grid on top.
Grid on the short legs.
Grid on the long legs.
We still need a good way of changing over from long to short legs while the braai is in use, I'm still scratching my head on that one...
Now for the actual wood working part, we added 2 angle irons to the back of the frame to act as handles (similar to a wheel barrow) and I will be making the wooden grips for these and then a small table top for spices etc.
From my table saw bench build you may know that I have a lot of recycled wood at hand. The initial idea was to use 38x38 "brandering" for the handles, but since I have loads of Meranti at hand i thought it would be much nicer to use this. The only problem was it was in the form of paneling from an old garage door, so i would have to try my hand at cutting the panel in strips and then laminating to get the proper profile. It was rather a struggle to get all the old varnish/beeswax and other gunk off of the panel, but I eventually managed to get a fairly clean surface. I cut the panel into 40mm wide strips.
Here are the strips ready for gluing.
Glued and clamped.
I also started on the table top, the strips for this was cut to 20mm wide and turned sideways, I did a quick mock up just to see if the general idea would work (finished size will be 520x200mm)
Thanks for looking!