DIY wooden barrels. Do-it-yourself oak barrel

For the construction of a bathhouse you can choose traditional version– cut down a small one or build a steam room according to frame technology. A sauna - a barrel made with your own hands from specially prepared boards - looks much more attractive and original. Since the method of assembling a house-side structure is of interest to many homeowners, we suggest considering the manufacturing procedure in this article.

Selection of design and dimensions

The building is similar to a barrel not only externally, but also structurally. The structure consists of the following elements:

• round end walls, knocked together from tightly fitted boards, are analogous to the bottom and lid of a barrel;
• side walls assembled from longitudinally laid thick boards with special recesses (following the example of a log house);
• external ties made of steel strip or cable, resembling barrel iron hoops;
• stands for horizontal installation of the assembled body on the ground;
• elements of interior design - stove, shelves, partitions with doors (if necessary).

Steam room, washing room and dressing room in the form of a classic round barrel

Reference. There are also more complex designs, made in the form of a rectangle with rounded corners or an oval, shown in the photo below.

The first step is to decide on the design and layout of the bathhouse premises - the future dimensions and foundation of the structure depend on this. Please note an important point: the side walls are made of solid boards made specifically for the bathhouse, so the length of the structure directly depends on the length of the lumber.

Construction and interior layout barrels are developed depending on the selected type of bath and other wishes of the homeowner as follows:

A beginner who decides to build a barrel-shaped bathhouse on his own is not recommended to start with large structures equipped with several internal partitions. Make a one-room sauna 2 m long - if desired, it can be loaded onto a car trailer and taken to a recreation area near a pond.

Harvesting lumber

The beams and boards for a bathhouse made in the form of a barrel must be sawn from hardwood - aspen, linden, and so on. Of the coniferous species, the use of cedar and larch, which are resistant to temperature changes and moisture, is allowed. Pine and spruce, when heated strongly, release resin, whose drops can burn people in the steam room.

Advice. If the choice of wood is limited only coniferous species, for the cladding of the upper part of the body, select boards without knots, which are sources of resinous discharge.

To make a barrel-type sauna, purchase the following timber:

• timber minimum cross-section 10 x 10 cm for stands;
• a board 45-50 mm thick and 10 cm wide is used for assembling end and side walls;
• wooden door 0.7 x 1.8 m with a frame (you can buy a ready-made one or make it yourself from timber 50 x 50 mm and boards 2.5 cm thick);
• lumber for the manufacture of shelves and lattice trays.

The number of boards on the end walls of the barrel is calculated as follows: the area of ​​the circle is determined, the resulting value is divided by the width of the product and multiplied by a safety factor of 1.2. Do not forget to add bars - power jumpers that connect the boards to each other during the panel assembly process.

Side paneling timber is calculated by the circumference divided by the width of the board. Apply a safety factor since the wood must be mortise-and-tongued on a woodworking machine.

Note. On sale it is not difficult to find ready-made kits for assembling bathhouses - barrels of various sizes and layouts. But often the quality of these products does not correspond to their cost.

What else will be needed in the process of building a round bath:

• metal ties - steel cables or strips;
• fasteners – galvanized screws and nails;
• compositions for external and internal wood treatment – ​​antiseptics, varnishes;
• materials for the manufacture of the roof - shingles, plywood, beams and roof covering(common options are bitumen shingles or corrugated sheets);
• sauna stove of appropriate power, calculated according to the volume of the steam room;
• chimney pipes - sandwich;
• special lamps and switches for baths, non-flammable cables.

If you plan to use the barrel year-round, it is worth making external insulation. Suitable thermal insulation material– mineral wool, polymers are not recommended.

Wood processing

Since the walls of the bathhouse are joined in a special way - like log cabins, all boards need machining using cutters on a machine, cutting out semicircular grooves by hand is unrealistic. The developer needs to contact a woodworking workshop and provide sketches with the parameters of the workpieces. Exact dimensions ridges, grooves and profile of the cutter are indicated in the drawing.

To facilitate further construction work, process the trimmed workpieces in advance according to the instructions:

Advice. Cover the surfaces of the workpieces going outside and inside the barrel with various protective compounds. Apply from inside special remedy for baths and steam rooms.

After painting, stack the boards to dry, laying thin strips between the tiers. How to lead correctly preparatory work, look at the video:

Manufacturing of end walls

As mentioned above, a barrel-sauna is made with your own hands from two (minimum) round edge elements connected by profiled cladding boards. Therefore, construction begins with the assembly of the ends of the barrel using panel technology.

Place 2 support beams on a flat area and begin assembling the rear blank wall in the following sequence:

Advice. It is not necessary to tie the blanks into a shield with two long jumpers. Place 4 crossbars shorter and closer to the edge - the product will look more aesthetically pleasing.

When assembling, the groove of each subsequent beam is put on the ridge of the previous one, as builders of log houses do. This connection method prevents precipitation from entering the joint. Fit the boards tightly; if necessary, use clamps and wedging.

The front wall is made in the same way, only the door frame serves as the base. Twist it with self-tapping screws from the beams, having previously secured it to the stands with clamps and aligned the diagonals with a tape measure. To trace the circle, nail a temporary board to the box with the center on it.

After sawing off the excess, sand the ends of both pieces and install the door. It would not hurt to additionally secure the outer boards of the wall with long furniture screws screwed into the adjacent board bars. How to make the round walls of a barrel-sauna, watch the video:

Instructions for assembling the bath

The structure needs to be assembled locally - it is quite cumbersome to move. But first you need to make stands - legs located under the outer walls and partitions. For making, use as much as possible the scraps of materials left over after assembling the front and back walls. One of the design options is shown in the photo.

Installation of the sauna barrel is carried out in the following order:

Important point. A version of a traditional Russian bathhouse with a sink is installed at a slight slope towards the rear wall. A hole is drilled at the lowest point of the floor to drain water.

The finished body of the barrel should be protected from precipitation so that the upper part of the bath becomes less wet. It is recommended to use the budget method here:

1. Nail flexible wooden strips across the body at intervals of 0.5-0.6 m.
2. Pin sheets of thin plywood to the top of the planks.
3. Cover the improvised base of the roof with bitumen shingles.

If insulation is needed, the shingles are nailed to the body in several layers - the gap between the plywood and the outer surface of the barrel will increase. There you can put mineral wool covered diffusion membrane. The procedure for assembling the bathhouse is shown in detail in the next video:

Construction work

Once installation is complete, proceed to interior design barrels. The following work remains to be done in the bathhouse:

1. Make a ventilation hole in the rear end covered with a lid.
2. Place the oven using a metal stand. Protect the section of the wall behind the stove with fireproof materials - roofing steel or mineralite slabs.
3. Make a chimney from a sandwich pipe by making a hole in the ceiling. Read how to install chimney pipes correctly.
4. Make shelves and a floor drain (lattice tray), attach the elements to the walls.
5. Lay out the electrical wiring, install a bath lamp and a switch.

Under the barrel - Russian bathhouse, it is advisable to dig a pit in advance to drain water through a hole in the floor. There is another way of drainage - connect a flexible pipe to the drain, laid to a storm drain gutter or other place.

Conclusion

If you decide to self-production baths are barrels, please be patient and have plenty of free time. The author of the videos presented here spent about 1 month building it from scratch. Add time costs to resolve unforeseen delays and problems associated with lack of experience. There is a way to reduce construction time - order a ready-made kit to the craftsmen, and only do the installation yourself.

Design engineer with more than 8 years of experience in construction.
Graduated from the East Ukrainian National University. Vladimir Dal with a degree in Electronics Industry Equipment in 2011.

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What can be compared to, for example, a cucumber or a tomato pickled in an oak tub? And in a linden barrel, honey and apple juice are perfectly stored, and you can make kvass in it. Finally, an oak tub with a lemon or laurel tree today will not spoil the interior of even a city apartment. You just can’t find these simple products either in the store or on the market. But you can make such a barrel yourself, and although this task is not an easy one, an amateur craftsman is quite capable of handling it.

Step 1. Selecting wood

Before creating a barrel with your own hands, you need to choose wood. Oak and pine are not suitable for storing honey - honey darkens in an oak barrel, and smells of resin in a pine barrel. Here we need linden, aspen, plane tree. Poplar, willow, and alder will also do. But for pickling, pickling or soaking, there is nothing better than oak - such a barrel will last for decades. For other needs, you can use sedge, beech, spruce, fir, pine, cedar, larch and even birch.

Usually the lower part of the trunk of old trees is used for rivets; it is called “riveter”. But a tinkerer will choose blanks from ordinary firewood and adapt a thin trunk to the job. It is best to make rivets from raw wood.

Step 2. Splitting the lump

First, the log - it should be 5-6 cm longer than the future stave - is split in half, gently tapping the log on the butt of the ax. Each half is then again split into two parts and so on, depending on the thickness of the chock (Fig. 1), to ultimately obtain blanks 5-10 cm wide (for sweet clover - 15 cm) and 2.5-3 cm thick. You just need to try to ensure that the split goes radially - this will protect the riveting from cracking in the future.

Step 3. Drying the workpiece and processing

The chopped pieces are dried in a room with natural ventilation for at least a month. To speed up the process, you can use a dryer. The dried workpiece is processed with a plow or sherhebel and a plane. First, the outer surface of the riveting is planed. In this case, to check the curvature of the surface, you should make a template in advance (Fig. 2), cutting it out of a thin board according to the finished product. Next, the side surfaces are planed, also checking their curvature against the template.

Riveting can be tubular - in which one end is wider than the other, and barrel - with an expansion in the middle. The magnitude of these expansions determines the taper of the tub and the convexity of the central part of the barrel. It is enough if the ratio between the widest and narrowest part of the riveting is 1.7-1.8 (Fig. 3).

Processing of the side surface is completed by jointing. It is more convenient to do this by moving the workpiece along the jointer (Fig. 4).

Step 4. Processing the riveting with inside

At the next stage, we process the internal (in relation to the finished barrel) surface of the stave, cutting off excess wood with a plane or even an ax (Fig. 5). After this, the barrel stave can be considered ready, but the barrel stave still needs to be thinned to 12-15 mm in the middle (Fig. 6). Don't be confused by the fact that the rivets can have different widths - we take the best we can from each workpiece.

Step 5. Preparing the hoops

Barrel hoops are made of wood or steel. Wooden ones are not so durable, and they are a hundred times more hassle, so it is better to use steel ones. The hoops are hot rolled steel tape 1.6-2.0 mm thick and 30-50 mm wide.

Having measured the barrel at the place where the hoop is tensioned, we add double the width of the strip to this measurement. Using a hammer, we bend the workpiece into a ring, punch or drill holes and install rivets made of soft steel wire with a diameter of 4-5 mm (Fig. 7). One inner edge of the hoop must be flared by striking the pointed end of a hammer on a massive steel stand (Fig. 8).

Based on their location on the product, hoops are divided into fart hoops - the central hoop on the barrel, morning hoops - the outermost hoops, and neck hoops - the intermediate hoops.

Step 6. Assembling the product

A grandmother brought a crumbling tub to a handyman with a request to put it back together. Tom had never had to do this before, but he did not refuse the old woman. I came up with the following: I threw a rope on the floor and laid out rivets on it one after the other. Then he pressed them down with pillows and pulled the ends of the rope together. Gradually removing the pillows, I brought the outer rivets together and secured them with a hoop.

Coopers make it easier.

The product is assembled on any flat surface. First, two rivets are attached to the hoop opposite each other with special brackets bent from hoop iron (Fig. 9). Then, by attaching rivets to one of them, we will get to the other, which will press the assembled half of the barrel. Continue assembling until the rivets fill the entire perimeter of the hoop.

Lightly tapping the hoop with a hammer, we set it down and check whether the edges of the rivets meet tightly. To achieve contact between the rivets over the entire side surface, you need to add a rivet or pull out an extra one and then install a permanent hoop. By the way, if changing the number of rivets does not give the desired effect, you just need to narrow one of the rivets or replace the narrow one with a wider one.

Having leveled the ends of the frame with light blows of a hammer, put on the middle hoop and push it until it stops using a hammer (Fig. 10).

Step 7. Trimming the frame and final screed

Having placed the frame on a flat surface, we describe the cut line with a pencil using a block (Fig. 11). Having installed the morning hoop, we cut off the frame 2-3 mm from it and clean the ends of the rivets with a plane. We do the same with the other end of the frame.

When making a keg, after attaching the onion, neck and morning hoop on one side, the other side must first be tightened. Coopers have for this special device- yoke. A home craftsman can use a cable, rope, chain or wire for the same purposes. You can tie a noose and gag it, or tighten the ends of the cable with a lever (Fig. 12).

There is no need to steam or boil the core, as some experts recommend, before tightening. Occasionally, however, it happens that the riveting does not bend along its entire length, but in one place and therefore cracks. However, in such cases the cooper will prefer to simply make a new stave.

Step 8. Cleaning the frame from the inside

The assembled frame is cleaned from the inside with a plane or sherhebel, and the ends of the frame are cleaned with a humpback plane (Fig. 13).
Now you need to make a morning groove in the frame (Fig. 14). The cutter of the tool can be made from hoop iron, or even better, from a saw blade. The depth and width of the groove should be 3 mm (Figure 15).

Step 9. Making the bottom shield

First, from sweet clover with planed outer side and the bottom shield is assembled using the jointed side surfaces (Fig. 16). The clover is fastened with nails, as shown in the figure, for which nests 15-20 mm deep are pre-drilled. The radius of the future bottom is found as a side regular hexagon, inscribed in the circle of the morning groove on the frame of the barrel. However, you need to cut out the bottom with a margin, departing from the intended circle by 1 - 1.5 mm. After cleaning with Sherhebel, chamfers are cut from the edge of the bottom (Fig. 17) so that three millimeters from the edge the thickness of the wood is 3 mm - this is necessary for the tightness of the connection between the bottom and the frame in the morning groove (Fig. 18).

Step 10. Fitting the bottom shield

We do the first fitting - having loosened the hoop, we put in the bottom, inserting one side of it into the groove, and then lightly hitting the rest of it with a hammer. If the bottom is tight, you need to further loosen the hoop, and if it is too loose, tighten it.

After stuffing the hoop, make sure there are no gaps. An ideal result is rarely achieved the first time. Even if the cracks are not visible to the eye, you can find them by pouring a little water into the barrel. If it flows between the rivets, it means the bottom is too big and needs to be slightly planed. It's worse if water leaks through the bottom or through the mouth groove. Then you will have to disassemble the frame and narrow one of the rivets.

Step 11. Installing the second bottom

Before installing the second bottom, a filling hole with a diameter of 30-32 mm should be drilled in it. The plug is made as shown in Fig. 19, its height must be no less than the thickness of the bottom, but the plug must not protrude beyond the plane of the frame edge.

Step 12. Painting

First of all, it depends on the operating conditions. But it is important to remember that painting filling containers oil paint should not be used: it clogs the pores, which contributes to the rotting of the wood. It is advisable to paint the hoops - they will not rust. IN decorative purposes a barrel or flower tub can be treated with mordants.

The brown color of oak is given by slaked lime mixed with a 25% ammonia solution. Black solution iron sulfate or infusion of iron filings in vinegar for 5-6 days.

A decoction of the rhizomes of woodruff (Asperula odorata) colors linden and aspen red. The decoction gives a red-brown color onion peel, brown - decoction of fruit walnut. These dyes are both brighter than chemical ones and more stable.

It is also important to remember that wood is better preserved at constant humidity. Therefore, dry containers should always be kept dry, and bulk products filled with liquid. Both of them cannot be placed directly on the ground. It is better to place a brick or plank under the barrel than to subsequently get rid of rot by cutting the chimes.

But no matter how long the barrel serves, all this time it will be a pleasant reminder to the owner of the difficulties overcome in understanding the secrets ancient craft cooper.

Today there are not many masters of cooperage left, but the tradition of making pickling in tubs, or storing honey and wine in barrels has remained in Russia to this day. It often happens that for one reason or another it is not possible to acquire wooden containers. Then you can make an oak barrel with your own hands. Even if this is not the easiest task, however, if you set yourself a clear goal and follow all the features of the technology, you can make quite decent wooden containers for storing food and drinks. We will talk about how to make an oak barrel with your own hands below.

Making blanks

To make a container, you first need to select the material. If you want to store beekeeping products inside, pay attention to linden or aspen raw materials, plane tree. Honey is stored quite well in barrels made of poplar, alder wood, and willow. Oak barrel ideal for pickling, fermenting or soaking.

If you have figured out the raw materials, you should choose an old tree. Its lower part is best suited for rivets. During preparation, be sure to make sure that the block is a couple of centimeters larger than the size of the future barrel. This reserve is needed for sanding the edges.

The wood must be damp. Initially, the block splits into 2 parts. To do this, use an ax and a small log, which is gently tapped on the butt. Each half splits in two again. It is necessary to ensure that the separation occurs radially. Do the same with each subsequent half - the number of blanks depends on the diameter of the oak barrel. It’s easy to prepare raw materials with your own hands, the main thing is accuracy. Please note that blanks may have different widths, but it's not scary.

The rivets are dried indoors, where there is good natural ventilation. The period is at least 1 month, and ideally even about 1 year. After drying, it is processed with special tools. It could be:

• plow;
• sherhebel;
• plane.

First, the outer side of the riveting is processed, making sure to check the degree of curvature using a pre-prepared template. It can be cut from a thin piece of wood, attaching it to the finished product. After all the outer surfaces have been processed, you can proceed to the side ones. They are also leveled according to a template, and after processing they are jointed. The inner surface of the riveting is processed with a plane.

Rings

Both steel and wood can be used to make hoops. The latter option is less durable, so it is better to immediately give preference to metal. For hoops, hot-rolled steel in the form of a tape is used. Its width is about 3-5 cm, and thickness: 0.16-0.2 cm.

You need to take measurements at the place where the hoop will be stretched. After that to a certain value add the width of the strip, doubled. Using a hammer, the workpiece is bent to take the shape of a ring, and then holes are punched or drilled in it and rivets are placed. The material for them is mild steel wire, the diameter of which is 0.4-0.5 cm. One of the inner edges of the hoop must be flared with the pointed end of a hammer.

Subtleties of assembly

Making oak barrels with your own hands requires patience. However, the result is worth the time and effort. So, to assemble a barrel for pickling, you need a flat surface. To obtain finished barrel need to:

The skeleton does not need to be boiled or steamed before pulling, although there are those who insist on this. There are times when the workpiece may crack. Then experienced coopers replace it with a new one.

Bottom

To make the bottom, first you need to cut a groove from the bottom at a distance of 4-5 cm from the edge of the end; its dimensions can be 0.4-0.5 mm. For this purpose, a special tool is used - a morning party. Using a chisel, you need to make a chamfer of 0.1 to 0.2 cm on both sides of the groove.

The bottom is made from a special shield. It is assembled using metal pins or nails. Having drawn a circle, you need to step back from it by 1-1.5 cm and cut out the future bottom. After this, it is cleaned with Sherhebel, and chamfers are cut along the edges. As a result, the thickness of the rivets there will be no more than 0.3 cm. This ensures complete tightness of the structure.

To do the fitting, loosen the bottom hoop and insert the bottom. It is inserted into the groove from one side, and from the other it is adjusted with a hammer to the desired level by lightly tapping. If the movement is tight, you can loosen the hoop a little more; if it moves too loosely, it is better to tighten the hoop.

Next, the hoop is stuffed again, and the barrel is checked for leaks. To do this, pour some water into it. If there is a leak between the rivets, you need to reduce the bottom a little. If water seeps through the bottom or groove, you will have to disassemble the frame and narrow one of the blanks.

Before installing the second bottom, make a hole in it, the diameter of which is no more than 3 cm, and make a plug for it. Correct sizes It is assumed that it will be slightly larger than the thickness of the bottom and will not protrude beyond the frame. That's the whole sequence that needs to be followed to make an oak barrel with your own hands.

Repair

Can it be repaired? old barrel? Of course. If in it for a long time was stored alcoholic drink, it is worth disassembling the structure and removing a layer of about 2 mm thick from the wood. The drink does not penetrate further into the wood. After this, the rivets are processed and reassembled.

You can repair an oak barrel with your own hands, even if it is leaking. To do this, you need to repeat the same manipulations as when making containers - adjust the hoops.

This is what it is, cooperage. You can make wooden products yourself, but this requires a lot of time and effort. But is it worth spending them if today you can order online on the website of the Russian Bondar company?

Isn't it an interesting evidence of the technology of storing beer in barrels?

How closely the cooperage industry was closely connected with the life of the people can be judged by proverbs and sayings. So, they said about the insufficient satisfaction of a person’s spiritual needs: “A person is not a barrel, you can’t fill it, but you can’t plug it with a nail.” Or about a dying person: “A man is not a barrel, you can’t put it together by frets, you can’t tie it with hoops.” At the same time, wanting to emphasize the spiritual poverty of someone’s human nature, emptiness, worthlessness, they said: “I ring a lot in an empty barrel”; “I’m overfed, I’m a barrel of a barrel”; “The devil go to hell” (an ugly drinking binge began).

In our time, the cooperage industry, which once flourished, in individual workshop few people do it, although the demand for cooperage utensils is considerable. Yes, this is understandable. Cooperage products, varied in shape and size, purpose and use, and even in artistic performance, finds the widest use. It is used for fermentation and pickling, for winemaking and brewing, for storing all kinds of food and non-food products.

From one old book on the cooperage craft, we present an excerpt indicating the spread of this business in our country at the beginning of the 20th century: “Cooperage is one of the largest branches of handicraft industry in Russia. It is difficult to find such a corner in provinces with forests, where peasants were not engaged in the manufacture of one or another wooden utensils. Cooperage has been carried out since time immemorial and passes from generation to generation: from grandfather to father and from father to son, providing a fair income, which is a great help to the peasant in his farm.”
So, the reader has already guessed that cooperage is worth engaging in if there is a forest. But before we talk about raw materials, let's dwell on some general concepts.

Barrel and its components

Of all the cooperage products, the barrel was, is and remains the most common, which most often comes with a convex frame. To create a wooden barrel, stave boards, or frets, are used. Of these, in turn, three sets are formed. To make the first main set, intended for the side wall, or frame of the barrel, curved long and narrow stave boards are used. The other two sets are bottoms, or bottoms, of a flat shape, mostly round. In order for the bottoms to stay in the frets, a fold is chosen at both ends of the frets, called a morning groove, or simply a morning. It includes transverse boards that make up the bottom. The side boards themselves (rivets, frets) are smoothed along the side edges so evenly that they fit very tightly against each other. This tight fit is helped by hoops that tighten them - iron or wood.

A barrel, according to V.I. Dahl (from “barrel”, “boschisty”, “side”), is a knitted hoop wooden vessel consisting of frets, or rivets, two bottoms embedded in chimes, and hoops (Fig. 1) . It is clear that this wooden vessel got its name because of the sides that protrude to the sides. By the way, this design feature a barrel with a convex frame (as opposed to a straight one) gives it special strength. In large barrels, if necessary, a hole is drilled, a tap (screwdriver) is inserted into the hole or plugged with a so-called nail (plug).

Open cooperage products (tubs, buckets, tubs, vats, etc.) have one bottom. Their side frames are straight walls located at an acute, right or obtuse angle relative to the bottom plane.

Dimensions and volume of barrels

The length dimensions of staves and bottoms of barrels range from 60 to 180 cm. For staves 180 cm long, take a ridge of the appropriate length (with an increase of 4-5 cm), with a diameter of 40-50 cm. From such a ridge, 24 staves should come out with a width of 14-16 cm and 4 cm thick.

For rivets 150 cm long, take a ridge with a diameter of 36-40 cm. The number of rivets from such a ridge is 24, the width of each is 10 cm, the thickness is 4 cm.

For staves with a length of 120 cm and 90 cm, a ridge with a diameter of 28-36 cm is suitable. The width of the staves is 8 cm, thickness is 3 cm.
For rivets 60 cm long, a ridge with a diameter of 18-26 cm is taken. The width of the resulting rivets will be 6-8 cm and the thickness 1.5-2 cm.

The ridge is marked as shown in Fig. 2, o. Then every sixth part is divided by four. They are already making rivets from them required sizes, making sure that the sapwood and heartwood are chipped away. In the case when the ridge is larger than what we need to make the appropriate size of rivets, it can be marked in another way - two-row or three-row (Fig. 2.6."

For sawing logs into rivets, the following schemes can be proposed (Fig. 3,4,5,6).

For the bottoms of 180 cm barrels there is a ridge with a diameter of 56-60 cm and a length of 94 cm. The width of the boards is 30 cm, the thickness is 3-4 cm.

To make a 40-bucket oak barrel, you need staves 90-120 cm long, 8-14 cm wide, 2-3 cm thick.

For ordinary tubs, rivets are prepared 60-90 cm long, 8-12 cm wide. 4 cm thick.

For small barrels and buckets, staves are made 60-90 cm long, 10 cm wide and 2-3 cm thick.

The most popular barrels are those with a height of 50 and 70 cm. For more economical consumption materials, it makes sense to make barrels in pairs. One is 50 cm high, the other is 70 cm high. In this case, waste from a larger barrel can serve as blanks for a smaller one.

Due to the ovoid shape, calculating the volume of the barrel is difficult. However, in practice, coopers have found a way to quickly and fairly accurately calculate this volume. So, to calculate the volume of a barrel, it is necessary to measure its height from one mouth to the other, as well as the diameters in two places: in the central part and in the bottom. It is better to take measurements in decimeters (remember, 1 dm = 10 cm), since 1 dm3 is equal to 1 liter. Each measured diameter is then squared.

Next, the larger number obtained is doubled and added to the smaller one. The result is multiplied by the height of the barrel, and then multiplied again by 3.14. The product obtained from the multiplication is divided by 12 to obtain the volume of the barrel in liters. To find out how many buckets are contained in a barrel, its volume in liters is divided by 12 (the usual volume of one bucket in liters).

For example, let’s calculate the volume of a barrel with a height of 70 cm (7 dm), a large diameter of 60 cm (6 dm), and a small diameter (bottom diameter) of 50 cm (5 dm). Let's make the calculations:

1) 5x5 = 25 dm2;
2) 6x6 = 36 dm2;
3) 36 x2 = 72 dm2;
4) 72 + 25 = 97 dm2;
5) 97 dm2 x7 dm = 679 dm3;
6) 679 dm3x3,14 = = 2132 dm3;
7) 2132 dm3: 12 = 148 dm3 = = 148 l;
8) 148 l: 12 = 15 buckets.

In literal expression, the formula for calculating the volume of a barrel will look like this:

(d2 + 2D2) h - n
where: V is the capacity of the barrel in liters;
d is the diameter of the barrel bottom;
D - diameter of the central part of the barrel;
h - barrel height;
l - constant value 3.14.

What shape and how many rivets are needed?

To make it easier to find answers to the questions posed, the cooper draws circles around the center and bottom of the future barrel on a sheet of cardboard or paper (Fig. 7). Moreover, you can draw on a scale of 1:1. Then the calculations are simplified. Or you can draw with a corresponding reduction of 2, 4, 5 times, etc. And then when making calculations it is necessary to take this decrease into account.

So, we know that in our example the large diameter is 60 cm. The bottom diameter is 50 cm. We draw the corresponding diameters on the drawing. If we only know the diameter of the bottom, then without much difficulty (by adding 1/5 of the bottom diameter) we can obtain the diameter of the central part of the barrel (abdominal). And vice versa. If we know the large diameter, then we can calculate (by subtracting 1/6 large diameter) bottom diameter.

There are two ways to set the number of rivets. Or, knowing the width in the center of one given stave, we line up the required amount of this value in the drawing along a large circle. Or we divide this circle by a certain number of times (in our case by 16) and thus find out the width of the widest part of the riveting. Knowing the radius of the large circle (30 cm), using the well-known formula (2tcr) we find the length of this circle: 2x30x3.14 = 188.4 cm.

Now we divide this length by the number of rivets (16). We get 11.7 cm. Rounding this number, we get 12 cm. This will be the width of the central part of the riveting. If we draw the appropriate number of radial lines in the drawing (in our case 16), then here in the drawing we can measure the width of the end of the riveting. It will be approximately 10 cm. That is, the width of the end of the riveting will be less than the width of its central part by 1/6 of the last size.

In our drawing we can also establish the curvature (convexity) of the rivets and the amount of bevel of the side edges. We can increase or decrease the number of rivets. The dimensions of each individual rivet will change accordingly. Note that with a given barrel height of 70 cm from top to bottom, the actual length of the riveting should be approximately 84 cm (taking into account bending and trimming).

The thickness of the riveting in this example will be 2 cm (60-50 = 10 cm; 10:5 = 2 cm). Thicker V is the total volume of the cylindrical product; d - bottom diameter; i is a constant value equal to 3.14.

The internal volume of conical cooperage products is calculated using the truncated cone formula:

V = l h (D2 + d2 + Dd).

The letter designations in this formula are the same.
Making staves or frets
Let's talk about making rivets step by step.

1. Cutting rivets. Different types of trees are used to make staves. Depending on the purpose of the barrels, the appropriate wood is chosen. For example, oak barrels are considered the best. They are mainly intended for storing alcohol, cognac, beer, wine, etc. White oak is usually used to make staves for barrels used in winemaking.

By the way, the use of oak barrels in winemaking is very often a necessary technological condition for obtaining the appropriate drink. For example, alcoholic drink Rum (45% ABV) is made from aged rum spirit, which is the result of the fermentation and distillation of sugar cane juice. Aging rum in oak barrels is an indispensable technology.
If they are going to store water in a barrel, then the staves for it are made of pine, aspen or spruce. To store milk and dairy products, juniper and linden are used in barrels.

There are certain requirements for the original wood. It must be dry and without defects: without dullness, wormholes, sprouts, curls, overgrown knots, without so-called shells. There is nothing to say about rotten and broken wood. It is clear that this is not suitable for making barrels.

To make rivets, it is best to use wood split along the core layers. Rivets made from such planks are the most resistant to bending. Usually they are hewn out with a special cooper's ax. But they also make rivets sawn. If extruded staves are intended for barrels, in which various liquids are then going to be stored, then sawn staves are used for barrels for bulk materials - sand, flour, etc.

It is best to make rivets from wood that has just been cut down. And the most suitable harvesting time is October and November. Trees are felled to the ground using a saw or an ax. And then they cut it into rivets (Fig. 10). That is, first the tree is cleared of branches, then sawn into ridges so that, according to Alina, they are 2-3 cm higher than the future rivets or even more. Next, the ridges are split into pieces along the core rays. Sometimes they also prick on growth rings. Then the riveting turns out to be convex-concave (Fig. 11). But it is easier to prick along the core rays. It is convenient to chop with a splitting axe, which has a thick butt and a sharp and wide wedge.

From Figure 10 you can see how this work is done and in what sequence. Depending on the thickness, the ridges are split first into halves, then into quarters, and into eighths. If possible, they also prick in sixteenths, etc. From the resulting minimal part of the ridge, the sapwood and core are chopped off - that is, the loosest layers of wood along with the bark using a wedge-shaped curved knife (see Fig. 11). Now the resulting middle part is pricked along the growth rings in two or three. The newly obtained parts are called gnatin-nik. In terms of width, they try to get it 1 cm larger than the width of the future riveting (Fig. 12). But now the gnatinnik is cut into rivets. It is clear that the thickness of the workpiece must exceed the thickness of the future riveting: after all, wet wood, when dried, will be reduced by 12-20%. The cooper knows from experience what size to make the blanks depending on the species and moisture content of the forest.

We have already seen schemes for single-row, double-row and three-row cutting of ridges. Note that the most waste is generated by single-row pruning. This is clearly visible in Fig. 13 when comparing it with Fig. 2,b,c.

Dry wood splits more easily. Naturally, it is easier to saw rivets from dry wood. The rivets are cut in such a way that they are wider in the middle than at the ends (more precisely, they are then trimmed off). But at the ends their thickness is slightly greater than in the middle part. Thickening at the ends is necessary for cutting out the chimney, that is, a groove for the bottom or bottom. For correct and faster cutting of rivets, use a template. The latter can be a ready-made riveting. You can also make a template from plywood in the form of a finished stave.

2. Drying staves. Before finishing the rivets, they are dried. The rivets are folded in twos crosswise. Natural drying can last up to a year. Therefore, the cooper usually makes himself a supply of staves for this time. You can also dry the rivets in a special dryer - indoors heated and with air circulation.

If a cooper makes barrels, as they say, for his own needs, then there is no need to build a special drying room. After all, to make one or two barrels, staves can be dried at home over a stove or without it, if the house is not rural or country house. When drying, make sure that the rivets do not crack, especially at the ends. To do this, the latter are smeared with clay or paint or even sealed with paper. Drying time can last from one day (for example, in a hot stove) to several days (in a warm room).

3. Processing of rivets. After drying, the boards of both staves and bottoms are processed, that is, they are given exactly the shape that is necessary for the manufacture of barrels.

Usually the rivets are made 2-3 cm longer than necessary, so after drying they are shortened at both ends with a bow saw. If a barrel is made with a concave bottom, then the rivets are not shortened, but cut down, leveled in the saddle, when the barrel is assembled, tied with hoops and a place for the bottom has already been marked.
Dried and shortened rivets are processed inside and outside. Each cooper processes them differently. As a result of processing, the rivets must be very precisely adjusted to each other.

At the beginning of processing, the stave is cut off from the outside with a special cooper's ax (it is ground to one side). The cooper works on a block of wood (Fig. 15), holding the rivet with his left hand and chipping with his right. You can cut not only with an ax, but also with one of the plows or mowers on the cooper's bench (Fig. 16, 17). The cooper's movements during this work must be leisurely, very calculated, so as not to spoil the riveting with an excessive flake or cut. As a rule, the cooper uses mowers (Fig. 18), gentry (Fig. 19) and plows (Fig. 20) for subsequent finishing of the staves. The hewn stave outside and inside is checked against the template. When the planing is completed, they begin planing the rivets. For this purpose, first take a plane with a convex sole and an arc-shaped blade. They plan the rivets, and then slightly smooth the latter with a straight plane, removing small shavings. The final finishing and processing of the staves is carried out when they are already assembled in the barrel. In Fig. 21,c shows a riveting of the shape required for the manufacture of convex barrels. The form may be the same as shown in Fig. 21.6", This riveting in the middle is much wider than at the edges. Bevel the riveting towards the edges very carefully. This work can be done by eye, but it is better, all the time checking with the template, marking the irregularities with a pencil. In performing this work you need not only accuracy, but also great precision... If it is not there, then during assembly the sides of the rivets may not fit together, and then there will be no hassle in fitting.

About internal processing rivets Let's say a little more in detail. During this work, first of all, the thickness of the riveting is outlined over the entire surface, especially carefully in the necks, that is, at the ends. The thickness is marked using a template - a scriber (Fig. 22). The scriber is placed in the middle of the riveting so that the tip a is on the very edge of the riveting. Then the template is guided along the entire length of the riveting. The point b will mark the thickness of the neck. It is clear that when making barrels different sizes The thickness of the rivets will also be different. And therefore, the cooper should have several scribers. A stave with a marked thickness is strengthened in a machine and all excess wood is trimmed off with an ax or plow.

The last operation for processing rivets is their jointing. As we have already said, the outlines of the future barrel are directly related to the shape of the stave. If the side lines of the riveting are straight, then the barrel will also be straight. The most durable and convenient shape of the barrel is convex. For it, the riveting is made as shown in Fig. 21. That is, its middle is wide, the ends are narrowed. The most common ratio of the middle and ends of the riveting, as we have already noted, is the following: at the end the riveting should be narrower or less than the middle by 1/6. For example, if the width of the stave in the middle is 12 cm, then at the ends it will be 10 cm. The ratio may be different. Note that the greater the difference between the width in the middle and at the end of the riveting, the steeper the barrel will be at the sides.

Plan and joint the marked ribs of the stave with a plane and jointer, securing it in the ladle (Fig. 23). You can also perform this operation on a large barrel plane (Fig. 24). When jointing, the ribs are not jointed closely, but a small gap is made. That is, the edges of the staves are slightly beveled inward. When you tighten the barrel with hoops, the existing gap will disappear: the rivets will press tightly against each other.

Bottoms

These parts of the barrel are made from boards that are slightly thicker than staves. The boards are first planed with a plane and then jointed tightly together. Depending on the width of the boards and the size of the barrel, the bottom can be made of four, five, six, etc. boards (Fig. 25). It is more convenient to cut the boards for the bottom from one board. Since the bottom of the barrel has round shape, then the composite planks are selected to such a length that later, when making the bottom round, there will be less waste (Fig. 26). Bottom boards are usually planed from the outside. The inside is either not planed at all, or only slightly planed.

Hoops

They are made either iron or wood. Iron ones are made from strip iron, the width of which depends on the size barrels. Most often, the width is 3-4 cm. The ends of the strip iron are placed on top of each other and riveted. It is advisable to use iron hoops for large barrels. For wooden hoops, maple, oak, elm, beech, and ash wood are used. Some other durable and flexible wood is also used for wooden hoops - juniper, bird cherry, spruce, etc. For hoops choose young tree, which is pruned every 10-12 years, is the most flexible. When harvesting wood for hoops, the following tools are used: an axe, a knife, a planer, a hammer, splinter wedges, or a hammer. It’s good to prepare wooden hoops late autumn or at the beginning of winter. The bark is not removed from young trees or twigs. Depending on the thickness, each rod is split lengthwise into two halves, three or four parts.

To split into two plates, it is convenient to use a knife. In other cases, they use a chipping wedge made of hard wood (Fig. 27). A cut is made in the rod with a knife into three or four parts. Insert a corresponding splinter wedge into the cut and pull the rod over it. The latter is split into the number of parts we need. Most often, hoops are made from halves of a rod, which are bent around stakes driven into the ground in a ring (Fig. 28). The ends of the hoops are tied behind the stakes. Having fixed the hoops in this way, they are allowed to dry. But it is more convenient to use a special cone-shaped blank for bending hoops (Fig. 29). The upper part of this blank corresponds to small hoops, the lower part to large ones. Sometimes the blanks are steamed before being bent into hoops. To make bending easier, use auxiliary tools - a hammer or a special bracket driven into the wall or wooden beam(Fig. 30).

Assembling rivets

After the rivets, bottoms, and hoops are prepared, begin assembling the barrel. First of all, of course, the rivets are collected. But, before assembling them, the rivets must, as the coopers say, be drawn to each other, that is, adjusted, pressed. Draw using a regular compass, surface planer or caliper. Find the middle at the ends of each stave and mark it. Next, find the middle along the length of the rivet and, placing the point of the fixed leg of the compass here, draw an arc at the ends of the rivet with the other end. Having completed this operation with all the rivets, the neck line is thus found. It is along this that the chimes will then be used to insert the bottoms.

After drawing, begin assembling the rivets. First, take the head or end hoop (the one with which the rivets are tightened at the ends) and attach the sleeve rivet to it. This is the name given to the riveting in which the barrel sleeve will be located, if it is planned. The sleeve or regular first rivet is attached to the hoop using a clamp or a clamp similar to a clothespin (Fig. 31).

Let’s make a reservation: in cooperage workshops they begin to collect the skeleton of the barrel using a special working hoop. It is a metal ring made of round or strip iron with a thickness of 10-15 mm. The diameter of the working hoop is usually slightly larger than the diameter of the permanent one - after all, it is then removed, replacing it with the latter. Depending on the size of the barrel, cooperage workshops have several working hoops that duplicate the permanent hoops (head hoops, also known as neck hoops or end hoops, middle hoops, or abdominal hoops). They also use a safety hoop, which is essentially the same working hoop (Fig. 32).

So, let's continue talking about assembling rivets into a frame. The widest or main rivet is placed directly opposite the first rivet, and one more is placed between them on the sides at the same distance. The rivets are also secured with clamps or clamps. Such an arrangement of rivets will help to firmly hold the head hoop as if on four legs. Next, the remaining rivets are placed in their places. Then the clamps are removed and the head hoop is slightly lowered downward, while at the same time one or two neck hoops and one middle hoop are pushed onto the frame (it is also called the abdominal or fart hoop). This initial work of assembling the rivets into the frame can be done differently. That is, placing two rivets opposite each other, apply a hoop and install other rivets one by one, attaching them with clamps. Of course it's hard to cook rivets, which would fit together, as they say, without a hitch.

It happens that the last riveting turns out to be wider than necessary. Then one or two adjacent rivets are reduced in width. Or one wide one is replaced with two narrow rivets. In the event that the diameters of the edges of the barrel do not match, that is, one edge is wider or narrower than the other, two, three or several rivets are moved with their ends in reverse side. In this way, equal diameters are achieved at the upper and lower bases of the barrel. When all the rivets are arranged, the neck and middle hoops are put on, the frame is turned over and the rivets are tightened using a collar (Fig. 34) or a rope (Fig. 35). However, you need to be careful when tightening the rivets so as not to break any of them. It is best to tighten pre-steamed rivets. There are several ways to heat and steam the latter. In large cooperage workshops they use a specially designed brazier stove with a fire hood (Fig. 36). The principle of its operation is clear from the figure. For smaller workshops, we can recommend an iron barbecue grill (Fig. 37). The rivets are steamed using an iron round oven with an extension pipe.

The hollow (as coopers call the half-assembled frame) is placed on this stove. It is heated, and the rivets on the inside are pre-moistened with water. When heated, the rivets are steamed. After this, they become more bendable and less brittle. If the diameter of the barrel is smaller than our round stove, then the hollow is put on the stove pipe, having first removed one of its elbows, and then (after placing the hollow) putting it in place. Now the stove pipe passing through the hollow of the barrel will do the steaming work we need. The hollow itself is placed on stands, covered with iron lids on top and bottom. Each of the covers is cut out of sheet iron in the form of two semicircles with similar semicircular cutouts for passing the stove pipe. Again, generously spray the hollow with water before steaming, and during it. The heat from the chimney heats up the water, turning it into steam. Well, the latter does his steaming job. Each cooper decides how much to steam the rivets by experience. Typically this operation lasts 1-2 hours. Over-steamed rivets become too soft to bend. Under-spread rivets burst when bent.

The duration of steaming also depends on how much the rivets need to be bent. If we are making a small barrel with a slight bend in the rivets, then it is not necessary to resort to using an iron round furnace. You can also use an iron barbecue grill. Wood is lit in the barbecue. When hot smoldering coals are formed, it is placed in the middle of the hollow and the rivets are steamed. Of course, this work is done in some non-residential premises where there is free exchange with outside air. The steamed rivets are pulled together. This is done, as already noted, with the help of puffs and a collar or with the help of a regular stick and rope (twist). A rope loop is thrown over the neck part of the frame and gradually tightened. If the existing rivets are thick (as a rule, in large barrels), then use not one, but two, or even three puffs. Tighten gradually. First, the middle part is tightened, then the cervical part. It is useful to twist the hollow of the barrel first one way or the other, turning it like the steering wheel of a car. This helps to make the rivet tie uniform. Sometimes one or the other rivet sticks out from the general row. It is straightened using a wooden hammer - a mallet. When the ends of the rivets come together tightly enough, hoops begin to be pushed onto the hollow of the barrel. First the large one (abdominal), then the cervical and head ones. These hoops are considered to be working hoops. Permanent hoops are fitted onto the barrel after inserting the bottoms.

After the rivets are pulled together on one side of the hollow, it is turned over and the rivets on the other end are tightened. The resulting object with the rivets tightened is rightfully called the frame of a barrel, or a bottomless barrel. This frame with working hoops is dried for several days or one to two weeks (depending on the drying conditions: near the stove or in the open air). Then it is hardened from the inside, that is, fired. To do this, shavings are ignited in the frame. Next, the frame is rolled, making sure that the wood is not charred, but only slightly heated, acquiring a golden hue. This is what the old masters did. But it’s easier to singe the frame with a blowtorch, naturally observing fire safety rules. Firing or hardening is carried out so that the rivets in the frame become significantly stable in shape. IN industrial conditions hardening is carried out on a manga oven. Small barrels do not need to be fired. It is enough to dry them at high temperature, for example, in a Russian oven.

Conical-shaped frames (with straight walls) are not hardened at all, since their rivets do not have a bend along their length. After hardening a bottomless barrel, its hoops are upset, since during firing the wood softened, some of its moisture evaporated, that is, the rivets dried out somewhat. The hoops are pressed using a hammer and heel (Fig. 38, 39, 40). During this operation, the rivets are pressed tightly against each other with their ribs, leaving no cracks or gaps. All irregularities are simply crushed. Then they begin to trim the protruding ends of the rivets with a bow saw, placing the frame in the saddle (Fig. 41) or on the bench (Fig. 42).

How this alignment is performed can be seen from the last figure. Let us only note that the cutting is carried out so that the cut surface is inclined somewhat inward to the frame. Next, the chamfers are removed using a cooper's knife, a plow or a barrel plane. Chamfers or cuts are removed to half the thickness of the ends. In this way, any chipping of the ends of the rivets or their splitting on the inside of the frame is prevented. The ends of the latter, after taking the chamfers, generally become neat and beautiful view. Here we are once again convinced that beauty and benefit are not separable, they are very closely interrelated.

We are not touching the outside edges of the ends yet. We leave their finishing for later, when we finish making the barrel. Before cutting out the chimes and inserting the bottoms, the frame of the barrel is planed from the inside and outside. The fact is that after firing and settling the hoops, the edges of adjacent rivets often form protrusions (coopers call them sags). It is these sags that need to be smoothed out using plows. For external planing, a concave plow, scraper or plane is used, for internal planing - a convex one.

When planing from the outside, the hoops are temporarily removed one at a time. First from one end of the frame, then from the other. The cervical surface of the frame is especially carefully aligned from the inside. Only in this case is it possible to select a groove that is even in circumference and depth. And therefore, the insertion of the bottoms will be dense and durable. Sometimes this is limited to stripping the neck part at a distance of 10-15 cm from the edge of the frame.

After finishing the stripping, they begin to excavate the morning groove. This operation is performed in the morning (Fig. 43). And if the cooperage product is small and cleanliness and correctness of the notch are not required, then the chisel groove is selected with a comb (Fig. 44). In both cases, 3-5 cm retreat from the edge.

The mouth groove is chosen only on one side if a barrel is being prepared that opens from the other end. If you plan to make a blank, double-bottomed (closed) barrel, then a chisel groove is selected at the two ends of the frame. To perform this operation, the frame of the barrel is placed in the saddle or on a workbench. When cutting out a groove, coopers use a simple rule. The depth of the groove should not be more than half the thickness of the ends of the rivets, and the width of the chimney should not exceed the thickness of the bottom boards. On the contrary, the width is made slightly narrower than the thickness of the bottom by about 3-5 mm. This is the only way to achieve a tight fit of the bottom in the barrel and prevent a possible leak.

Now let's start making the bottoms. Although this has already been discussed above, let us recall that the bottoms are made of rivets-planks, different in width, but identical in thickness, tightly fitted and jointed to each other. The thickness of the bottoms usually exceeds the thickness of the side rivets. Depending on the size of the cooperage, the bottoms may consist of 4-6 planks, united into one shield. Before joining the planks into a single shield, each of them is carefully planed with a planer, scraper, or planer.

The side edges are also carefully, and maybe even more carefully, footed. After this, the planks are clamped in a pincer (Fig. 32). You can first consolidate them using spikes. On the shield formed from the planks, clamped in the jam, a circle of the future bottom is outlined (Fig. 26). Attention - its diameter must exceed the diameter of the barrel in the chime by twice the depth of the chimney groove.

Now the excess parts of the boards are sawed off with a bow saw according to the markings made. You can first disassemble the shield. Or you can file it directly in the nip. External side The bottoms are carefully planed again. On the inside, the edges are trimmed off at the bottom. A compass is used to outline the boundary of this sloping chamfer. Its width is usually 4-7 cm.

It is necessary to remove this chamfer because the thickness of the bottom boards is greater than the thickness of the carbon groove. At chamfered the bottom will go into the morning and as it goes down the density of its contact with the carbon oxide groove will increase. Sometimes the chamfer is also removed from the outside of the bottom. But this chamfer is made small. Its width should be less than the depth of the morning groove. Then, after inserting the bottom into the barrel, the chamfer will be completely hidden.

Boards making up bottom, each has its own name. In a bottom consisting of 4 boards, the middle two are called main, and the side ones are called cuts. In a bottom of 6 boards, the middle two are also called main, the next two are side, and the outer ones are still cuts. The prepared bottom is inserted into the morning. It is difficult to insert the entire bottom. More often it is inserted with disassembled planks. First, one or two hoops are removed from the end of the barrel frame.

The rivets will come apart. Insert the bottom, starting from the outer (side) planks. The last middle plank is the most difficult to insert. They are inserted approximately in this order. First, insert one end into the morning groove. On the other edge, one or two rivets are bent so that it is convenient to insert the other end of the board into the morning. When performing this work, use auxiliary tools: cap pliers (Fig. 32), tension (Fig. 45). The rivets will separate somewhat when the bottom is inserted.

They are put in place wooden hammer. Having inserted the bottom at one end of the barrel, insert it similarly at the other. The second bottom is more difficult to insert, since it can no longer be supported from below.

Not one plank at a time, but the entire bottom is inserted in the following order. First, one end edge is inserted into the morning. Next, the rivets are spread wide and the entire bottom is inserted into the hole. Before insertion, the chimes are often coated with putty using a spatula (a mixture of red lead or chalk and boiled linseed oil- drying oils). For a tighter fit of the bottom, so-called barrel grass is also used: rush grass, reed, etc. This cooper grass is placed in the morning groove using caulk (Fig. 38). After both bottoms are inserted into the chimes, the rivets are adjusted again with a wooden hammer, and then they are tightened tightly using puffs. The work is completed by putting the hoops back on the ends of the barrel.

Sometimes, for greater strength, the bottom of the barrel is reinforced with an adjustment board (Fig. 46) - a heel. It is a board 15 cm wide and 3-4 cm thick. Its length corresponds to the diameter of the bottom. The heel is secured across the bottom boards with dowels. The latter are hammered into the ends of the rivets next to the morning groove. The dowels are made long enough so that the heel fastening is reliable. The shape of the dowels does not have to be round. It can be faceted, for example quadrangular. It’s even better if it is like this, since when the barrel dries out, the round pins sometimes fall out, and the faceted ones are retained. The number of dowels on each side of the heel varies from 4 to 6.

The last finishing operation for making barrels is stuffing the permanent hoops. Their number varies. Up to 18 wooden hoops or 6-8 iron hoops are stuffed onto a large barrel. For a medium-sized barrel, the usual number of wooden hoops is 14-16 pieces. Their gradation is as follows: 8 cervical (4 hoops on each edge), 6 abdominal (3 hoops in half of the barrel). Less commonly, 10 wooden hoops are mounted (6 neck, 4 abdominal; both neck and abdominal hoops are equally distributed on both halves of the barrel). Let us note right away that a barrel with 10 wooden hoops is less strong than one with 14.

Wooden hoops are made from hoop whips. These whips are used to encircle the barrel in the place where the hoop is supposed to be placed. Make appropriate marks on the whip and on the barrel. The places of notches for tying the lock are marked on the whip (Fig. 47). An allowance of 10-12 cm is left on the lock at both ends of the hoop. The ends themselves are cut obliquely in the form of pointed tongues. Where we marked the notches, make cuts half the width of the hoop whip. At one end of the hoop, an incision is made from above, at the other - from below. On the inside of the hoop, in the direction from the cuts to the middle, notches are made 4-5 cm long, gradually fading away. Now they are knitting a lock. Namely: the ends of the hoop are hooked onto each other with the protrusions of the cuts and placed in the corresponding recesses. That is, the ends are brought in and hidden on the inside of the hoop. Often the hoop at the place where the lock is knitted is braided with willow twigs for strength.

As the reader has already understood, the working hoops are removed from the barrel, replacing them with permanent ones. This must be done sequentially: first, the abdominal hoops are replaced in one half of the barrel, then the neck hoops are all in the same half, and only then the same is done with the second half of the barrel. The last neck hoops are especially difficult to pull onto the frame of the barrel. The hoop is placed on the rivets first from one edge.

Then from the other, helping yourself with tension and tightening. This is how they work by tension. The end of its handle is pressed against the side of the barrel, and the other end of the same handle is pressed with your hand. At this time, the hoop is slightly stretched by the tension grip and, grasping the ends of the rivets, pulls them together. The rivets are gradually driven deeper into the hoop one after another.

Sometimes the half-circle of the hoop is put on and the rivets slip off. To prevent this from happening, the worn half of the hoop is secured to the edges of the frame with small nails. They should be driven in no more than half the thickness of the ends of the rivets. After the wooden hoop is pulled over the barrel, it must be placed in its intended place.

They use a wooden hammer and a heel (Fig. 48). The heel is placed with the indentation of the sole on the edge of the hoop. By hitting the head of the heel with a hammer, the hoop is pushed into place. The latter must be stuffed onto the barrel without any distortions, to capacity, tightly covering its circumference.

Making iron hoops similar to making wood. The width and thickness of the iron hoops depend on the size of the barrel. Usually they take strip iron 3-4 cm wide. Here they also begin work by measuring the barrel. The strip iron is cut with allowances from both ends of the hoop into an overlay of 10-12 cm. The corners of the ends of the hoop are also cut off with scissors or a chisel. These ends are then either welded or riveted. Welding can be done the way coopers did in the old days without a welding machine.

In the forge, the ends of the hoop were red-hot. And then, without allowing it to cool, the ends were welded on an anvil, holding with tongs and hitting with a forge hammer. But more often than not, the ends are riveted together. They are placed on top of each other and at least two holes are drilled or punched, retreating from the edge along the length of the hoop by 2 and 6 cm. Using a hammer, the surface of the hoop is given a slope so that it fits more tightly around the circumference of the barrel.

Iron hoops are mounted in the same way as wooden hoops. Only in this case they use an iron hammer and a heel. To prevent rust, iron hoops are painted with black oil paint. The look of the finished wooden product with the black stripes of the hoops is a sight to behold.

After fitting the permanent hoops, the barrel is finally finished. They pass with a plow or grinder along the bottoms and sides of the barrel. They cut off the ends of the barrel grass near the mornings and clean up the putty that has come out of them. The chamfers are corrected with a scraper. If planned, a bushing hole is drilled in the barrel. The walls of the hole are made either vertical or inclined.

Based on materials from the magazine: CAM

Vegetables are pickled in barrels, bulk products are stored, and water is kept in reserve. They are needed in the pantry, on the site, in the bathhouse. How to make a wooden barrel with your own hands so that it is strong, reliable, durable, does not allow water to pass through and does not rot? What tools and skills are needed for the job, what will need to be studied and taken into account? This instruction will help you become a useful craftsman and even start your own business making planters.

Wooden barrel for household needs

Cooperation craft - how to become a master

If you are in a decisive mood, have skills in woodworking, and your hands are always growing, why not try to realize the idea of ​​​​becoming a home cooper (cooper)? Cooperation is a difficult craft that comes from ancient times. Nowadays there are very few masters of this craft, and there are only a few highly qualified craftsmen. Therefore, cooperage products are rare on the market, and even if you can find them, either the price or quality does not please the buyer.

Barrel assembly process

What tools are needed to assemble barrels?

Having decided to make your first barrel, keg or tub, you need to equip your workplace and stock up on the necessary tools, fixtures, and available materials. In addition to the usual carpentry kit, you will need to stock up on special cooperage equipment, fixtures and tools. This:

• carpentry workbench, equipped for cooperage;
• cooper's long jointer, circular humpback plane;
• a device for planing the edges of the boards from which the product is assembled);
• devices for tightening rivets (frame machine-gate, chain tie, post gate);
• plow, stapler, stapler;
• hand-made patterns and templates;
• metal or wooden clamps for assembling the barrel frame;
• morning maker (a device for cutting a morning groove into which the bottom of the product is inserted);
• heels (metal, wood, combined), tension for hoop;
• cooper's bracket.

Fixtures and measuring instruments

It should be taken into account that coopers make a significant part of the devices and tools themselves, “to suit themselves”, ensuring that the handles of the tools are held in the palm like a glove, and that the machines and workbenches are of the same height.

On the left is a two-handed, on the right is a one-handed morning drill and how to work with it

What you need to know to make cooperage products

A distinctive feature of cooper's ware is that it is assembled from wooden planks prepared in a special way, called rivets (otherwise known as frets). The shape and dimensions of the product are completely determined by the configuration of the planks, which are pre-made by the cooper. And the consumer qualities of wooden containers depend on the type of wood used.

Therefore, it is not enough for a cooper to simply be able to master the tools perfectly. He must feel the “soul” of the tree and know the properties of each type of wood from which he plans to make this or that household item.

Staves are the main element for making a barrel

An experienced cooper will not make an oak barrel for storing honey - when stored in it, the honey will darken and acquire an unusual aroma. But oak barrels are indispensable for aging wine and other alcoholic beverages: oak wood gives them new aromas and flavor shades.

The second element, without which cooperage products are unthinkable, is a hoop that holds the elements, tightens them tightly, thanks to which wooden barrels do not leak. Hoops are made of metal and wood. There is an opinion that metal hoops are stronger, and the hassle of making them is much less than with wooden ones. However, some masters think differently and do beautiful products using wooden hoops.

Planter on wooden hoops

Main details and manufacturing principle

It may seem that the task of becoming an amateur cooper is too difficult, and one can only quietly dream about how to make a barrel out of wood. But if you're serious about making your dream come true, it's time to roll up your sleeves.

First of all, you need to choose the type of product that will become your first-born. With all their diversity, there are three types: with a conical, parabolic and cylindrical frame. As already mentioned, the shape of a cooper's product is completely determined by the configuration of the staves from which it is assembled - the more complex the shape, the more difficult it is to make the treasured wooden barrel.

Impact of configuration on product type

The figure above shows the types of cooperage utensils and the corresponding types of staves:

• Grooved, made in the form of a quadrangle, the long sides of which have the form of parabolic curves. Used in the manufacture of cooperage utensils with convex sides: barrels, kegs. Such rivets are the most difficult to make, which determines the complexity of making barrels in general.
• The base of the container is a cylinder. They are easy to manufacture because they are rectangular grooved boards. It is easy to make such frets, but it is difficult to connect them with hoops with a constant diameter. When the wood dries out, the hoops no longer hold the rivets. Therefore, cylindrical cooperage products are practically never found.
• Utensils are made from straight grooved frets in the shape of an elongated trapezoid, the frame of which is a truncated cone. When the hoop is stuffed onto the wide part of such containers, a very strong tightening of the rivets is achieved. This feature has found application in the manufacture of various tubs, tubs, and jugs.

A mini-bath is built using the same principle.

For the first experiment, it is advisable to choose the manufacture of a small tub, commonly called a barrel.

How to make a country tub for pickles

Kadushka is the simplest cooperage product with a conical frame. Having achieved success in building a tub, you can try on how to make a more complex barrel at home. The creation process consists of three large stages:

• production of blanks (components) of the product;
• assembly of the structure;
• finishing.

Planter for beginners

Independent preparation of rivets for the tub

The reliability and durability of a wooden barrel depends on how carefully the rivets are prepared. The most suitable are considered to be blanks chopped with an ax from logs and logs of sawn wood. Only the lower part of old tree trunks is suitable for this.

Oak wood, most often used to make barrels, is very durable. But oak logs (blocks) are quite easily split with an ax in the radial direction. In general, the process of preparing rivets from various trees approximately the same. There are single-row and double-row pruning methods. Single-row is suitable for splitting thin logs, double-row - for massive logs.

Double-row punching of blanks

The procedure for cutting rivets from a ridge:

1. Split the ridge into 2 parts so that the split line passes exactly through its center.
2. Also split each block in half - you get quadruples.
3. Split the quadruples into 2 parts, obtaining octagons. For a thin block of wood, the pricking process usually ends here. It is the eighth part that will serve as a rough blank for future riveting. This is a single-row prick.
4. If the ridge is thick, make a two-row split: split each octagon in half along the annual ring (perpendicular to the medullary rays). The resulting logs are called gnatinniki.
5. Split each gnatinnik in the radial direction. In this case, you will get 1-2 riveted blanks from the smaller one and 2-5 blanks from the larger one.
6. Perform a small processing of the workpieces: cut off the wedge-shaped protrusions from the core side and the sapwood (frail young wood from the bark side).
7. Send the workpieces to dry. In summer, they need to be dried in the open air for at least 3 months or resort to artificial drying.

Sequence of making rivets

Making rivets from blanks

Before making rivets, it is necessary to make templates and patterns in accordance with the shape and dimensions of a particular product.

To make rivets for a tub or barrel, you need:

1. Make markings.
2. Perform rough processing of each riveted blank: slightly round the outer surface and bevel the edges with an ax.
3. Start finishing the outer surface with a straight plow or planer, controlling the process with a template.
4. Plan the inner side with a fillet or humpback staple.
5. Use an ax to trim the narrow edges of the frets, checking the accuracy with a template.
6. Level the surface of the edges with a jointer.

To determine the required number of rivets, you need to find the largest perimeter of the tub: multiply the diameter by 3.14. This value will be equal to the sum of the widths of all elements. For simplicity, so as not to have to measure the width of each part (and it can vary), you can lay out a straight line segment on a flat surface equal to the largest perimeter of the barrel. Lay the finished rivets across the line until it is closed.

Hoop from metal sheet

Making metal hoops for tubs

The cooper has to deal with both wood and metal, because the hoops that hold the dishes together have to be made independently from a metal sheet. But it’s easier to make hoops from hot-rolled steel strip. To do this you need:

1. Determine the perimeter of the tub at the location of the hoop, add double the width of the strip to it.
2. Using a hammer, bend the strip into a ring, placing the ends of the strip overlapping. Drill or punch 2 holes with a diameter of 4-5 mm, install steel rivets.
3. Flare one edge of the hoop from the inside with hammer blows.

Frame Assembly Steps

To make a small barrel at home, two hoops are enough, corresponding to the perimeters of its upper and lower parts.

Stages of assembling the frame of the tub

Side rivets, tightened with hoops, form the skeleton of a wooden barrel. The skeleton should be assembled like this:

1. Attach 3 support rivets to the small hoop with clamps at approximately equal distances from each other, which will allow you to install the structure vertically.
2. Inserting the frets one by one, fill the sector between the two support rivets, fill the space around the entire perimeter of the small hoop.
3. Using a hammer and heel, press down on the small hoop so that the parts fit securely together.
4. Place the lower hoop on the frame and also attach it with a heel.
5. File the ends of the frame along the line drawn with a thicknesser.
6. Use a scraper to remove any irregularities inside the frame.
7. Plan the ends with a humpback plane.
8. Using a straight plow, chamfer the inside of the frame from the ends. This will prevent them from chipping and make it easier to insert the bottom.
9. Using a morning tool, cut a groove (morter) into which the bottom will be inserted.

Cleaning up irregularities with a scraper

Assembling and installing the bottom of the tub

The fewer joints there are in the bottom, the higher its reliability. Therefore, for the bottom you need to select the widest and thickest blanks. The procedure for making the bottom of a wooden barrel with your own hands is as follows:

1. Sand the edges of the boards and temporarily seal them together on a workbench.
2. To determine the radius of the bottom, place the legs of the compass in the groove. Using the trial method, select a compass solution that divides the perimeter of the chimney into 6 equal parts.
3. On the solid rivets, draw a circle with the resulting compass solution.
4. Within the circle, make marks at the locations of the studs.
5. Release the planks. Drill holes in the edges at the marked locations and drive in wooden or metal pins.
6. Place the planks tightly together on the studs.
7. Plan the bottom on both sides.
8. From the center, again draw a circle of the same radius as before.
9. Use a circular saw to cut out the bottom, leaving a small margin outside the circle.
10. Use a straight plow to chamfer both sides so that the thickness of the wood at a distance from the edge equal to the depth of the chimney remains equal to its width.
11. Knock down a large hoop with a heel, loosening the fastening of the rivets. Insert the bottom into the morning.
12. Carefully turn the tub upside down and place a large hoop on it.

Now the homemade tub is almost ready. All that remains is to make the lid and circle. This will not be difficult - you can focus on making the bottom. After checking the barrel for leaks, you can begin preparing pickles in it.

You may also find it helpful to watch a training video.

Video: How to make a wooden tub

Using the techniques described, you can make tubs for indoor plants or flowerbeds for landscape design.

Flowerbed tubs will decorate the garden landscape

How to make a reliable wine barrel

Having mastered the manufacture of tubs, you can move on to constructing a wooden barrel for aging wine with your own hands. And if homemade wine is not a subject of your interests, then the acquired skills can become the basis profitable business. After all, the demand and prices for cooperage products on the market are quite high.

Selection of material and production of rivets

The material for the body of wine barrels is exclusively oak wood. The rivets for them are prepared in the same way as for the tubs, that is, split rivets are used. For an experiment, you can make a wooden barrel from boards (oak, of course). In this case, the barrel will last less than one made from chopped frets. It must be taken into account that the boards for riveted blanks should only be straight-layered, otherwise the walls will crack.

Selection of boards for riveted blanks: a) such boards are unsuitable; b) these boards are suitable

Frets for the barrel have a complex configuration. Each of them is thinner in the middle than at the ends, the outer surface is convex, the inner is grooved. And the side edges look like gentle parabolas. Accordingly, it is more difficult to make barrel frets than tub frets.

Stages of making barrel frets

First of all, you need to make a template, a pattern. Stages of making staves for a barrel:

1. Rough hewing with an ax with a semicircular blade until it is shaped into a prism. Reducing the thickness of the middle part by 15-20%.
2. Beveling the side edges with an ax. Rounding of the outer edge (control with a template). Using a template, measure the width of the stave in the middle, determine its dimensions at the ends, and apply marks.
3. Beveling the workpiece to the ends a little at a time curved arc. Chamfering the side edges with a template check.
4. Planing the outer plate with a plane or straight scraper.
5. Processing the inner surface with a humpback plane or humpback scraper.
6. Joining of edges.

Assembling a wooden barrel

The beginning of assembly is no different from assembling a tub

Stages of assembling a wooden barrel

The beginning of assembly does not differ from that for a tub until all the rivets are inserted into the upper (the barrel has 2 bottoms!) hoop. Next you need to do the following:

1. Fill the second hoop, called the neck hoop.
2. Steam the lower loose part of the frame to increase flexibility.
3. Steaming time depends on the hardness of the wood and the cross-sectional size of the frets. When constructing a thin-walled barrel with slightly steep sides, steaming is not required.
4. Tighten the steamed rivets with a chain tie or cooper's collar, put on the top hoop, then stuff the neck and middle hoops.
5. Harden and dry the frame in an accessible way, for example, by carefully rolling the frame, which contains a layer of burning shavings. You can use a gas burner or a blowtorch. The main thing is that the wood should be “tanned”, but not charred. This procedure fixes the shape of the barrel, and the taste of the drinks only improves.
6. Perform the same operations as with the frame of the tub: trimming, cleaning surfaces, cutting chimes.
7. Make and insert the bottoms, performing the same operations that were performed for this purpose for the tub. Only when installing the bottoms, in addition to removing the top one, you also need to loosen the neck one. In the upper bottom, pre-drill a hole for the fill and make a plug for it.

Hardening (firing) of wooden barrels

You can get acquainted with the process of making wine barrels visually by watching a short video.

Video: How to make a barrel out of wood

Video: Wine barrel made from boards

The construction of a barrel for a bath is similar

You have received some information on how to make a wooden barrel and tub with your own hands. If any questions remain, seek advice from an expert.

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