A wooden barrel with your own hands can be done quite easily. Such products are usually used for storing bulk products, pickling vegetables and storing water in reserve. A barrel may be needed on the site, in the pantry or in the bathhouse. Such a design, if you plan to make it yourself, should turn out to be strong, durable and reliable. It should not leak water and rot.
But before starting work, it is important to ask what is required for this, what technology will be used. If you feel a determined attitude and you have skills in woodworking, then you can try to realize the idea of making a barrel, although the craft is quite difficult. There are few such masters today, but there are only a few high-class masters. This is evidenced by the fact that there are few cooperage products on the market. If you can find them, then the price or quality may not please you.
Tool preparation
Before you make a wooden barrel with your own hands, you must equip the workplace and prepare all the necessary tools. You will need improvised materials and appropriate devices. You will need a regular set for carpentry, as well as special cooper equipment. Among other accessories should be highlighted:
- joiner's workbench;
- jointer;
- device for planing edges;
- brace;
- plow;
- device for tightening rivets;
- patterns;
- Templates
- wooden or metal clamps;
- chime;
- cooper bracket.
As for the carpentry workbench, it must be specially equipped for barrel work. The jointer should be long, you will also need a circular humpback planer. You must take care of a special device for the edges of the boards (the product will be assembled from the latter). You will need to tighten the rivets in the process, so you need a device for this. They can serve as a frame machine, pole gate or chain coupler. You can make patterns and patterns yourself.
Barrel island you perform using wooden or metal clamps. To cut the morning groove you must prepare a morning tee into which the bottom of the barrel will be inserted. A tightness for a hoop is heels that can be wooden, metal or combined. Before you make a wooden barrel with your own hands, you should take into account that usually coopers make tools and devices on their own, ensuring that the handles go into the hands of the master and fit well in the hand, like a glove. Workbenches and machines are usually customized for growth.
What you need to know for the manufacture of products
A distinctive feature of such products is the fact that they are made using wooden boards called rivets. The size and shape of the product will be determined by the configuration of the boards, which are pre-made by the master. Consumer characteristics of the container will depend on the type of wood used. In this regard, the master is not only able to own the tool. He must feel the "soul" of the tree and be familiar with the property of wood, which is used to make household items. So, before you make a wooden barrel with your own hands, you must consider what exactly it will be stored in. If this is honey, then oak cannot be used here, because honey will darken and acquire an unusual aroma. But such barrels are simply indispensable for wine and other alcoholic beverages, because such wood will only give new aromas and unique taste shades.
Another component of cooper products is a hoop that holds the elements and pulls them together. Thanks to this, barrels do not leak. Hoops are usually made of wood or metal. In the latter case, it can be assumed that the hoop will be stronger, and the trouble with it will be less than with the wooden one. But some craftsmen have a different opinion and perform beautiful products with the help of wooden hoops.
Details and manufacturing recommendations
If you believe that the task of becoming an amateur bochar is too complicated, you can first study the technology in more detail, and after that you can begin to make your dream a reality. First, you must choose the type of product that comes out of your hands for the first time. For example, among other types of skeleton, one can distinguish:
- conical;
- cylindrical;
- parabolic.
The shape of the product will be determined by the configuration of the rivets that will form the basis. With the complexity of the form, the treasured wooden barrel will be less easy to make. You will have to choose the type of buttons, which are grooved, from straight grooved frets and in the form of rectangles. The former have the shape of a quadrangle, the long sides of which have the form of parabolic curves. Such elements are used in the manufacture of dishes with convex sides. Rivets of this type are the most difficult to manufacture, which is a special snag. If the cylinder will be at the base of the container, then the planks should be rectangular. Making them simple, but joining hoops will be difficult. In the process of drying the wood hoops will not hold rivets well, so cylindrical products are almost never found.
If you want to make a cedar barrel from straight grooved frets, then the elements should look like an elongated trapezoid. The core of the skeleton will be a truncated cone. When stuffing the hoop on a wide surface of the container, you can achieve strong retraction of the rivets. In this case, you can get a tub, rollers or jugs. If making a barrel in your practice is the first experiment, it is best to make a small tub called a barrel.
Performing tubs for pickles
A wooden barrel for salting is the simplest product with a conical skeleton. The process of its creation will consist of three stages. At the first, it is necessary to complete the workpieces, or rather, the components. Next, the design is assembled and finished. At the first stage, you can prepare rivets. The longevity and reliability of the barrel will depend on how carefully you approach this stage.
The most suitable are blanks, which are performed using an ax from decks and logs. Only the lower part of the trunks of old trees is suitable for this. If you want to get durable products, it is better to choose oak wood, but such logs quite easily split in the radial direction.
The process of making staves from different trees is almost the same. The workpiece can be punctured with a single-row and two-row method. The first is suitable for splitting thin logs, while the second is for massive decks.
Making rivets from ridge
If you are thinking about how to make a wooden barrel, you should be interested in how to pick out the rivets. To do this, the ridge is split into two parts, so that the split line falls through the center. They chop the plahu in half to make quarters. They are split into two parts to make octopuses.
If you have a thin log block available, then its jab ends here. The eighth part will be a rough blank for riveting. This process is called single row punching. When making a 200 liter wooden barrel, you may notice that the ridge is quite thick. In this case, a two-row punch can be carried out. To do this, each octopus is split in half so that the line runs along the annual ring. The logs that can be obtained are called gnatniks. They are split in the radial direction. This will allow you to get workpieces from a smaller gnatnik.
Each such workpiece is processed, for this, the wedge-shaped protrusions should be chipped, carrying out work from the side of the core. Preparations after sapwood are sent to dry. It takes three months at least in the open air.
Making rivets
When making an oak wooden barrel, in the next step you will have to make riveting. To do this, a template and a pattern are made, it is necessary to act in this case taking into account the shape and size of a particular product. First, you will markup as well as roughing the riveted blanks. The outer surface is somewhat rounded, while the edges are ground off with an ax. Then you can start finishing using a planer. The template allows you to control the process.
With the humpback staple, you can plan the inside. The ax will allow to squeeze narrow edges. You can check the accuracy of the patterns. Surfaces are aligned with a jointer.
When making a cedar barrel, you will need to determine the number of staves. To do this, find the perimeter of the tub. To do this, the diameter is multiplied by 3, 14. The resulting value will be the sum of the width of all elements. In order not to deal with measuring the width of the parts, on a flat surface, you can put aside a line segment that will be the largest perimeter of the barrel. Finished rivets should be placed across the line until it ends.
Making a metal hoop
You will have to deal not only with wood, but also with metal, which will pull the product together. The base of the metal hoops will lie on a sheet. However, it is most simple to make hoops from a hot-rolled steel strip. To do this, determine the perimeter of the tub in the place where the hoop will be located. The double bandwidth is added to this value. With a hammer, you can bend the strip into a ring, placing the ends of the strip with an overlap.
To install steel rivets, it is necessary to drill or punch two holes with a diameter of about 5 mm. From the inside, one edge of the hoop should be flared with hammer blows. To make a wooden barrel with your own hands at home, two hoops will be enough for you, which will correspond to the perimeters of the lower and upper parts.
Skeleton assembly
The rivets that you wrap with hoops will make up the backbone of the barrel. It must be assembled as follows. Support rivets must be attached to the small hoop at approximately the same distance, which will allow the structure to be mounted vertically. Frets are inserted alternately, while you can fill the sector between the supporting rivets. Around the perimeter of the small hoop, the space is gradually filled.
With the help of a hammer and heel, the hoop should be laid down so that the parts close. A hoop is put on the island, then it is necessary to carry out the settling of the heel pad. On the line you need to file the ends of the skeleton. Inside, irregularities are removed with a staple. With the help of a humpback plane, ends are planed.
Work on the bottom
If you are faced with the question of how to assemble a wooden barrel, then you must install the bottom of the tub. The fewer joints it has, the higher its reliability. The widest thick blanks are selected for this part of the structure. The edges of the planks must be shaved off. They are temporarily rallied on a workbench. In order to determine the radius, the legs of the compass are installed in the groove. The compass solution should be selected by trial. This will divide the perimeter into 6 parts. On rivets, a circle is drawn with a compass solution. Within the circle you need to mark in the places where the studs are installed. On the last plank are tightly joined.
The bottom must be laid out on both sides. A circle of the same radius is drawn from the central part. You can cut the bottom with a saw, leaving a place in reserve outside the circle. On both sides it is necessary to chamfer with a straight plow so that the thickness of the wood remains equal to the width of the morning. The barrel hoop is knocked down with a heel, then you can loosen the rivets. The bottom is inserted into focus. The kadka turns upside down, which will allow to upset a large hoop.
The lid for a wooden barrel is a simple component of the design. It is made on the basis of the bottom. Before starting work, you should take care of what riveting will be made of. As an experiment, a product from oak planks can act. But in this case, the design will last less than that made of chipped frets. Boards for push-button blanks must be straight-layered, otherwise the walls will crack.
Frets will have a complex configuration. Each in the middle should be thinner than at the ends. The outer surface will be convex, and the inner grooved. The lateral edges should be in the form of gentle parabolas. This suggests that it is quite difficult and more difficult to perform barrel frets than frame frets.
Before you make a barrel with your own hands, drawings must be prepared and considered. From them you can find out what basic components the product will possess. So, for the manufacture of rivets, you can use the following technology. It is possible to carve out rivets with an ax using a semicircular blade. This will allow you to get the shape of a prism. The middle part should decrease by about 20%. The outer plate is planed with a planer. Next, you should grind the edges.
Finally
Having examined the types of wooden barrels before starting work, you can understand what technology to use. If you are just starting to try yourself in a cooperage business, then you should not immediately take on a barrel of complex configuration. It will be quite simple.
For starters, you can practice making pots for indoor plants. Such products also look great in the form of flower beds, which are used for landscape design. But if you are making a barrel for storing water, then before you start using it, you need to check the design for leaks. Only then can you use the barrel for making pickles.
In general, initially you need to choose the right wood. This is extremely important for the case when it is planned to store food inside. So, for example, an oak barrel is not suitable for water. Whereas such a product is perfectly suited for alcoholic beverages, which, when interacting with this type of wood, will only become better in taste.
It is permissible to manufacture from boards. This method is perfect for the case when you are only trying yourself in a cooperage business.