Onetap writes:

On Sep 20, 11:54=A0pm, Grimly Curmudgeon
wrote:
On Tue, 20 Sep 2011 04:34:43 GMT,

Pickaxe-sized holes around the bottom.
Alternatively, one 2" hole near the bottom and feed it with blown air
from an old furnace blower. Everything burns cleanly.

25+ years ago I used to have such an barrel rubbish burner with the
ventilation holes as specified (pick-axe). I set up a blower with an
old cylinder vacuum cleaner; the hose on some of these could be
connected to the outlet if you needed a blower. Air was blown into the
bottom of the barrel through a 10' length of scaffold tube, so the
vacuum cleaner didn't get hot.

After getting it burning, I set the vacuum cleaner going. Burning
became very intense, all smoking ceased; 5 or 10 minutes later the
barrel was incandescent, literally red (bright) hot. It started to
collapse under it's own weight. Predictable; I'd made a blast furnace.

A small blower would do this very well; a fan from a dead boiler or
a car blower would do nicely. The latter would have speed controls.

I'll have to see if I have anything which would do the job, though
maybe just enlarging the holes would help. Your suggestion has brought
to mind a memory from _many_ decades ago, of how effective small bellows
were at resuscitating a fire from one or two embers.

--
Windmill, Use t m i l l
@ O n e t e l dot c o m
J.R.R. Tolkien: All that is gold does not glister / Not all who wander are lost