I was thinking of standing a 55 gal. barrel upright and cutting it in half. My question is how do you make sure you have the barrel clean enough for my land traps.

Build a fire in it or boil water with a good dose of lye in it.

Scrub it out good first to get any oil out the lye cleans up traps good to . Don't breathe the fumes.

Should I stay away from petroleum product barrels or will the lye clean that out to. I am figuring on it holding about 20 gallons of water. How much lye should I use?

I boiled mine in a 30 gallon drum that used to have anti-freeze in it. All I did to clean it was pressure wash the inside, and then boil water in it with oak leaves and other stuff. Seemed to work!

beer keg, plasma cut the top, add spigot, i will get pics of mine int the am

I use metal grease barrels from work.They have plastic liners so there's usually not a lot of mess to clean out.I boil a couple hours with wood ash to get the smell out.

Old water heater tanks cut in half work well also. That's what I had laying around when I went looking for something.

Shen ,unless your doing a large quantity of traps heating 20 gallons will take a long time . Why not try a thrift shop or yard sale to find an old stock pot .

i have taked a 50 gal barrel cut it long ways so the bung hole is at the bottom. them screw a 4500 watt water heater element in the hole, plug it into your welder 220 plug. works great,just be sure you have water in the barrell before you hook it up ot you will burn up the element.

i have been using my 55 barrels for years. i take the barrel and cut it off at the first rib from the bottom and then put the locking ring back on. it makes a nice round edge...i build a fire in it, then i rinse it and its ready to go...and dont try buying a stock pot or any of that crap. bigger is always better, put in what you got or just what you wanna use for the year. 1 trap or 20 there covered and cooking. make it easy on yourself.

Use what makes sense . I just happen to have a collection of stock pots that came to me while I was in the meat business. I keep lye on hand because I manage multible properties. I use what I have because it seems to make sense . But when I wear em out I'll proly switch to a barrel.

Best to know what's in the barrel to begin with as there's no cold cutting for most people to use so fumes will be present
Depending on the type of barrel as how it gets cut (widths x length ) both work it's a perferance

Thanks evrybody I really appreciate the info.