Thread: Barrel Making

Don't know your location, but if you are anywhere near Bundaberg (my home town), you can go and see one being made at Schmieders cooperage. This is a tourist operation but I think the bloke that runs it also does work for the rum distillery which is a couple of hundred meters down the road.


Dan

I dropped in to Schmieder's when I was in Bundy. My mate that lives there is pretty good friends with the owner and he introduced me to him. He was a mine of information as one of these days I want to make some barrels. I watched the video they play there which shows them using traditional tools to make the barrels but they actually use machnery and power tools for it all now. For large barrels the staves are steam bent but he said for a small port barrel you could cut the curve on a bandsaw. You then place your curved blank against the tilted fence of your jointer to get the bevel angle. (I didn't ask and he didn't say how he worked this out but I figure you just draw out the cross section full size and work your angles out off that). The groove in the ends of the barrel (the croze) is cut with a router and a slotting bit. It's all a bit hard to explain but I had basically worked it out from spending a bit of time looking at a barrel, I just hadnt worked out that you curve the staves first and then bevel them, this also gives them their semi-elliptical shape.

Mick