Street artist needing iron to make raking fire (6)
I believe the answer is:
strafe
'fire' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'street artist needing iron' is the wordplay.
'street' becomes 'st' (abbreviation).
'artist' becomes 'RA' (Royal Academician, member of Royal Academy of Arts).
'needing' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'iron' becomes 'Fe' (Fe is the chemical symbol for iron).
'st'+'ra'+'fe'='STRAFE'
'to make raking' is the link.
This may not be right. Some or all of it may belong to another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for strafe that I've seen before include "Fire from the air with machine guns" , "Attack with machine guns or cannon from a low-flying plane" , "Spray with gunfire" , "Rake with machine-gun fire" , "Attack with machine-guns from the air" .)