How to Make a DIY Metal Compost Bin

Dad, how do I?

Transcript provided by YouTube and cleaned up with AI.

Hey kids! So today I want to show you how I made this homemade compost bin. It’s a metal bin because we had rats getting into our compost. I’m just going to show you how I did it. You can do it whatever way you want. But before I show you how to do that, I have a dad joke for you: composting is a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it! Ah! So I kind of look like Wilson here, don’t I? Howdy-ho, neighbor! Anyway, let’s get started.

This is where we used to put our compost. I’d come out here and dig a hole to put it down in there, and I was having to go deeper and deeper because of whatever animal—I think it was a rat—that was getting into it. So I bought this 32-gallon metal garbage can because rats can chew through plastic. They’ve done that before. I went ahead and got a metal garbage can. They sell these with the holes pre-drilled, but it wasn’t available at my local hardware store. So I just bought one that I’m going to drill the holes in myself.

When working with metal, you want to be careful because there are little shards that can come up. I really should be wearing gloves here, but you’ll see I put on gloves when I clean up these holes because there are going to be little fragments of metal hanging there. You want to make sure that those aren’t poking out to nip you later when you’re reaching down there. You want to make sure that’s done properly. So I’ll show you that. I’m going to walk you through drilling the holes real quick. I’m just doing them randomly; you can mark them out if you want them to be exact. I’m just trying to get some air circulating through.

Now that the holes are drilled, I’m going to go ahead and hit each hole with my grinder just to make sure it’s nice and smooth. I’m going to do the outside first, and then make sure that you grind down the inside of the holes as well. You don’t want any shards sticking out, right? If you’re putting your compost in there and you reach down inside, you don’t want to nick yourself—that would be painful!

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Now, you could actually drill holes in the bottom, but I’m going to remove the bottom, and I’ll show you how I did that. This is up to you; you could drill holes if you want to. So then I went ahead and went around the bottom and bent out that flange with a screwdriver and a hammer. I just kind of worked it in there and tapped it open to be able to remove that bottom. Then I just turned it over and started pounding on the bottom to get it to break loose. It has little welds all along it, besides that flange, to keep it secure because it’s not meant to be removed.

Notice I have ear protection on as well. You want to make sure because there’s a lot of pounding, the grinding is making noise, and everything’s making noise. You want to protect your ears.

I did have to work at it for a while, so I’m not going to lie—it took a bit of effort to get this thing off. There’s more than one way to do things. You could have done this using a pair of tin snips and worked your way around, but that would have its own issues, so I just did it my way.

Now I just went around it with vice grips. I just kind of clamped it on and worked my way around just to try to clean up that edge. There are edges pointing every which way, and I just wanted to have them be uniform for me.

You’re going to need to add holes to the lid as well, so again, I’m just doing this randomly. You can mark it out if you want it to look perfect or uniform, but I wasn’t too concerned about that. Just repeat the process: we’re going to do it with the drill, and then we’re going to need to go back and grind it, just like we did with the actual can. Now we’re going to go back with the grinder on the lid, and we want to make sure to get the inside of the lid as well. You just don’t want to have these shards sneaking up on you later. Take care of it now so you don’t have to worry about it later.

Okay, so here’s where we’re going to put this compost bin. I just want to get it in its general area, and then I’m going to need to dig it out because I want to bury it down in there a little bit. Now I’m just going to take the can and twist it back and forth to make a mark so I know where to dig.

I’m going to go ahead and remove this root because you want to make sure that it’s clear so we can get the garbage can to go down about 4 to 6 inches.

Okay, that’s about where we want it. Now I’m going to go ahead and throw some rocks around here. I don’t know that that’s necessary, but I had a bag of rocks, so I thought I’d just go ahead and do that to kind of make a nice edge for it. Now I’m going to go ahead and add that dirt back in that I removed. I also have some leaves and debris that have been composting just on the other side of this fence, so I’m going to go ahead and add some of that in along with some compost that I’m ready to bring out from the kitchen with some banana peels and some pineapple—banana peels, I should say—and some pineapple, and some other things that I’ve normally just been burying. I’m finally going to get to use this compost bin, which I’m pretty excited about!

So go ahead and put the leaves in and add some more dirt. I like to do this in layers when possible: add some leaves, add some dirt, add some compost, add some more dirt, add some more leaves—whatever works, whatever you have that you need to compost.

And these kind of twigs like this I would remove too because those take too long to break down. I normally compost by putting stuff in and then kind of breaking it up to help it break down, right? But you don’t want to put a whole pineapple in there; just put it in there and chop it up.

We had another pineapple, and rather than put them together, I chopped that one up earlier, and then I saved this one and am chopping it up here to kind of separate them and make them into different layers.

Then I put one last layer of leaves on top, and we’ll call that good for now. Alright, so I hope that was helpful for you! You can do it however you want. I’m going to go ahead and try it this way. I was going to leave the bottom in and just put holes in it, but I figured if I did that, it would end up getting rusty anyway on the bottom. So I thought I’d just go ahead and bang out that bottom and see how long it lasts. If I get 10 years out of it, the can cost me about $35, and it took me about a half hour’s worth of time to drill the holes and grind so that I wouldn’t cut myself.

Anyway, I think this should hold up for quite a while. I think it’ll probably outlast us! So anyway, I hope that was helpful for you. Thanks for watching and God bless!

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This post was previously published on YouTube.

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Welcome to “Dad, how do I?” Here you will find “How To” videos by a dad who has raised 2 adults (and we still talk). I will do my best to provide useful , practical content to many basic tasks that everyone should know how to do. On this channel, you will find a variety of content like How To’s, Story times, Dad Chats, and more!

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