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The paint on a used barrel is not meant for the high temperatures in a Rocket Mass Heater so you can either slowly poison yourself as it offgasses in the house over the next few months as the you use the heater OR you can clean the paint off. I have found barrel refurbishers who will charge me $40 or so to beadblast the barrel and I must say those look really nice but that's about 4x more than I usually pay for the barrel so most often we end up burning the paint off outside in a bonfire then wire brushing the flaky residue off. Usually it looks like hell and we end up painting the barrel with BBQ paint or stoveblack which looks nice but slightly insulates the barrel so it doesn't radiate heat as well. This time my hosts took an old shop trick and wiped the barrel down with a rag and a little bit of diesel fuel. Looks pretty good
