Cheap Drip Tray

After looking at a bunch of $30+ SS drip trays, I figured I could make something adequate for much less than that. Behold the $5 drip tray. Basically, it's just a 1 cf piece of 26 gauge galvanized steel sheet from Home Depot which I cut in half, bent up, and drilled holes into to make a drip tray. I'm a bit worried about the galvanized steel rusting where I drilled the holes, but we'll see. I wanted aluminum, but Home Depot was out and I was too damn impatient to wait. Anyway, all I did was cut the piece in half, bend the sides up at ~3/4" or so, drill some 1/2" holes in the top piece with a step bit, and fit the two pieces together. Below, you'll see my super-scientific blueprint along with some pictures. It's a little crooked, but not too bad considering I just put the pieces over a 2x4 and beat them into submission with a hammer. Anybody with an inkling of fabricating skills could surely do better than this.

Sweet Blueprint

pieces over a 2x4 and beat them into submission with a hammer.

Click to expand...

My kind of metalwork.

Just to let you know, some of the actual British bar drip trays look just like that, except they are inscribed on top with the bar name, and are either gold, brass or brushed finished, and are quite the show pieces.

Here is a kind of bad reprentation( as I cant find the actual URL, but is close...



I'll keep looking for the one that looks like yours. Good job!

Would you make me one for $5.00? I'd gladly pay you $10.00.


Looks great!

I cant find the one I want to show you, so here is second best:

Hey Tony. Those are pretty sharp. They actually had some fancy aluminum in different colors/patterns that would probably have worked well, but was too expensive for me. It'd probably be easy to make something similar to those pictures fairly easily, and it would look a lot nicer than mine :cross:

In my opinion, if you engraved your brewery name or something else, and polished yours, they would be just as good.

Excellent job!

Yeah, that looks just like mine that I got from England. Except mine's brass. Good job.

Nice work. I like the concept and the execution.

Verrry nice work Dustin. And yeah Tony's right. If you polished that up really well it'll look sharp. Did you run a file out the holes to smooth them out or just leave 'em drilled?

Ize

You know, if you're worried about the cuts rusting you could spray it with polyurethane. That would keep it nice and shiny, too. Just make sure you don't use the water based stuff.

http://www.barsupplies.com/stainless-steel-drip-tray-p-349.htmlcheck out this site for drip trays