how to safely cut a oil drum in half to make an evaporator

[fishnrod]

Just heard from a friend that someone recently cut into a steel barrel and did not know what was in it and blew himself up.
I Have a decent heating oil tank that i would like to make into an evaporator. It has about 20-25 gallons of fuel oil in it , which i will take out. My question is how do you make sure it is safe to cut.i.e. not in explosive range, and what tool or method would you,or have you used . grinder,saws all, plasma cutter?
or is there a method of removing all the flammable material from the inside?
Thanks Rod

[Bernie/MA]

I've cut tanks with a torch, outside. The only time one got going was when a piece of hot steel landed in the sludge in the tank. I would recomend a sawzall. An oil tank would be a lot safer than a barrel with unknown contents. A friend of mine had a barrel blow up when he struck an arc on it. He would have died if a friend hadn't happened to be there.

[spencer11]

i filled mine with some water, maybe 20 gallons and started cutting with a grinder and then used a sazall to make it go faster

[SevenCreeksSap]

I'd get some good sawzall blades and go for it. really doesnt take that long since your ripping thin metal. way less chance of a fire too though if its fuel oil it has less chance of an explosion than say gasoline. Mine had some sludge and a small amount of liquid and I cut it with the sawzall. then lit newspaper and burned out the sludge. stinky and smoky but didnt take long. putting water in it is a good idea.

[ericjeeper]

I built my entire arch today and only used 2 sawzall blades.

[YAZER]

I wouldn't add water to the oil tank, you would only have an oily mess, A sawzall will cut the tank no problem. I work for an oil company, we cut them up with a sawzall to clean them out.

[backyard sugaring]

I have cut many oil tanks with a sawzall to get them out of basements. I cut my own oil evaporator in less than 1/2 hour, scrapped out the gunk took it outside the barn and lit the remainder on fire. It doesn't burn like people think I had to use my torch to set it on fire. Lee

[spencer11]

i just dumped out the oil water mix and then burned the rest, it worked pretty good

[Paddymountain]

If you want to use a torch and you're afraid there may be fumes in it. hook up a pipe to your car exhaust for about fifteen minutes, that will push out all the flamable fumes and leave nothing but spent fumes from the exhaust. I've done this to gas tanks on cars before soldering or welding them,no proplems! works fine

[seclark]

As Lee said,sawzall is they way to go.We have cut many oil tanks in half to get out of basements also and have had not one issue.Just use good metal blades,the only part that is the toughest is the weld and that's not bad.

[5050racing]

Exhaust hoes on car or truck piped into it=co2 no o2 means no fire done it before.Just let it run for awhile,clap or tack a piece of angle iron to it and make a nice cut

[can'twaitforabigrun]

Just to reply to the original post, it was a high school shop student in Ottawa who died last year when a barrel he was cutting exploded. It's the fumes that caused the explosion, and oil drums would have less than containers containing gasoline, but you can never be too safe. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2012/10/01/ottawa-eric-leighton-inquest-called-school-explosion.html