When a mate asked what they were going to do with them all, he said he would probably crush them.

“Do you reckon you could make a chair out of one?” his mate asked.

The prototype “Ned Kelly chair”, fashioned from a cut-out 44-gallon drum with upholstered seat (the only ‘new’ part of the piece, aside from a steel reinforcing ring) and three reclaimed timber legs, was constructed “with only one trip to the pub” for a six-pack of inspiration.

The first drum-chair was meant to be a “one-off” artistic piece, Mr Fiske explained from an esky-table setting in Peel Street on Friday. He pulled a frosty beer out of a cooler (also made from a drum) built into the centre of a hardwood four-seater table. The plan was to sell it to a hip, inner-city type looking for something unique for their apartment, he said.

Eighteen years later, Mr Fiske sells the chairs as patio sets, kids’ settings, swivelling bar stools and two-seater couches.

He has set up shop at shows around the country and was even offered an exhibit at an international beer festival.

“I said I don’t make beer. But they said I make the best drinking furniture,” Mr Fiske said.

“We’re actually rounded, and our bodies seem to mould into a round drum shape,” Mr Fiske’s flyer says. “The chairs get more comfortable the longer you sit in them.”

The Ned Kelly chairs and esky-tables may never have made it to that hip inner-city apartment, but Mr Fiske said there had been plenty of interest on his first trip to the Tamworth Country Music Festival.