It is wonderful to have an open fire to sit around when enjoying the outdoors with friends and family. Purpose-built fire pits make this a safe and easy prospect for most back yards. Toasting marshmallows is awesome fun for the kids, but why not cook your main meal on your fire pit too?

Here's how to make a simple grill for your fire pit.

Step 1: Getting Started

This is a very simple design intended to be adapted to any fire pit. Simply design your grill to fit the fire pit you have.

Materials:

A fire pit. If you don't have one already you can make one by following my Fire Pit instructable.
About 4m of 12mm Rebar (or whatever similar material you can obtain). That's it!
Steak for Testing. I chose a T-Bone.
Beer to drink while the fire is burning down.

Tools/Equipment:

Safety gear:
- Good quality welding gloves.
- Face shield for grinding.
- Automatic darkening welding helmet. If you don't have one yet get one - it will change your life.
- Ear muffs.
Cut-off saw, or any other way to cut the rebar.
A way of bending the rebar. I heated the bar with a forge because I have one. An oxy torch would be more efficient, or bend it cold if you can. Or you could cut the steel and weld it to the correct angles. There are lots of ways to skin this cat.
A welder.
A grinder to prepare the steel for welding.
A wire brush to clean the finished grill nicely so you can cook on it.

Step 2: Build the Grill

This grill consists of two beams with hooks at each end to hang from the edges of the fire pit. Between these two beams are welded the bars that make up the grill.

First of all measure your fire pit to determine the length of your two beams. Allow enough extra at each end to make your hooks.

Cut your two beams to length. Mine were 500mm long with an extra 80mm at each end for the hooks.

One at a time, heat the ends of the beams and bend a hook shape as in the pictures. These hooks can be made larger or smaller depending on how close to the fire you want the grill to be.

Now you have your two beams, set them up on the fire pit and work out how far apart you want them. I made mine narrow enough to allow space to feed the fire. I settled for 200mm. I figured this would be big enough allow for any steak that I chose.

Cut enough short lengths of bar to make up the grill with about 10mm space between each one.

Making sure your beams are oriented correctly with the hooks at the correct angles, weld the bars between the beams. I made sure the ripple deformations in the bars were at the top so they would leave their mark on the meat.

When it's all welded together grab a wire brush disc on an angle grinder and knock off any rust or scale. Remember we want to eat off it.

Step 3: Testing

Light a fire in your fire pit. Make it a nice cheerful blaze and stick on a couple of nice big logs that will burn down to some good solid coals.

This step will take quite some time so I recommend rewarding yourself for progress so far with a beer. I found Cooper's Sparkling Ale to be just the ticket. Relax with your beer while you enjoy watching the flames die down.

I was slightly distracted at this point by some very noisy and entertaining cockatoos. I took a picture of one of them.

When the flames are low and the coals are glowing happily throw your steak on. Cook the steak to your own preference.

If you have any of that beer left you could consume it with the steak. Or maybe a merlot or shiraz would be more suitable.