Making a wooden barrel with your own hands. “Alcohol respirators don’t help”: coopers talk about the “underside” of winemaking Cooper is a master at rolling a barrel

Making a wooden barrel with your own hands will allow you not only to save money, but also to get a high-quality elegant product. Wooden barrels were used by our ancestors for pickles, making alcoholic beverages and storing water, which proved their versatility. Therefore, they are still successfully used to this day. How to make a wooden barrel so that it is durable and does not leak? What tools and skills are required to make a barrel at home?

If you are determined to achieve your goal and are not afraid that you will have to modify the product to the desired state, then you can make your dream come true and make a wooden barrel yourself. Cooperation is a difficult profession that came to us from past centuries. Today there are few masters of this craft, and there are even fewer highly qualified specialists in the manufacture of barrels, so barrels on free sale are rare, and not everyone can afford the cost of the product.

Tools

To make your first barrel or small barrel, you need to prepare a place in which it will be convenient to work, tools and suitable material. In addition to the carpentry kit needed to make a barrel with your own hands, you need to purchase cooper’s tools:

a carpentry workbench adapted for the production of barrels;
long jointer and circular humpback plane;
a device for planing edges on boards, from which a barrel will be assembled;
equipment for tightening rivets (post gate, chain tie and frame gate machine);
staple, plow, staple;
templates and patterns of our own production;
clamps made of wood, metal (for assembling the frame of the barrel);
Morning mat - a device that allows you to cut a morning groove into which the bottom part is inserted.

You need to understand that it is quite difficult to purchase these tools, wood and devices on the market, since almost all coopers make machines and layouts themselves, taking into account their height. This is done by trial and error, no instructions will help.

What you need to know

The main difference between cooperage products is their assembly from pre-prepared wooden boards (rivets). The size and shape of the barrel depend entirely on the pre-prepared boards, the configuration of which is set by the cooper. And the initial quality of wooden barrels depends entirely on the wood chosen. For this reason, it is not enough for a master to have thorough mastery of the instrument. You need to know the intricacies of each type of wood from which wooden products will be made.

An experienced craftsman will not make a barrel for honey from oak blanks, because he knows that in such a container the honey will quickly acquire a completely different aroma and darken. But it is impossible to find a replacement for oak barrels for aging wines and cognac.

The second element is a hoop that tightens all the components of the barrel. It is thanks to the hoop that water does not seep through the joints between the boards. It can be made of metal or wood. As the experience of craftsmen shows, metal hoops are much stronger, and less time is spent on manufacturing than wooden hoops. But some craftsmen still prefer a wooden hoop, giving the barrel a more beautiful look.

Details and principle of product manufacturing

Many people believe that becoming an amateur cooper is very difficult, and dreams never come true. But if you are not used to retreating from your decisions, then you need to decide which option will be your first job.

There are 3 types of products: conical, cylindrical and parabolic. Each corresponds to a certain type of rivets:

Products made in the shape of a quadrangle, the long sides of which have the shape of a parabola, are used for dishes with convex edges: barrels or kegs.
The cylinder-shaped design is simple. It is easy to make and connect with hoops of the same diameter, but when the wood in such a structure dries out, the rivets cease to perform their functions. This is the main reason why such containers are practically not manufactured.
The shape of an elongated trapezoid allows you to get durable dishes when stuffing rivets. Therefore, this type of product is often suitable for making tubs, tubs and other utensils.

As an experimental sample, it is better to focus on a simple small barrel.

Many people are interested in how a regular tub is made. A tub is the simplest cooper's product; having achieved results in its manufacture, you can move on to more complex types of utensils, for example, making a wooden barrel with your own hands.

The principle of creating a product consists of the following stages:

production of blanks;
assembling dishes;
Finishing work.

The reliability of the structure will depend on the quality of the riveting blank, so the most suitable are blanks from logs of sawn wood, chopped with an ax. For barrels, the most common wood choice is oak, as it splits easily in a radial direction. The process of preparing staves from different types of trees is practically the same; a single-row or double-row knockout method is used. For large logs, a two-row method is used, and for thin logs, only a single-row method is used.

The procedure for cutting out rivets is as follows:

The ridge must be carefully split in half so that the split line runs strictly through the center of the workpiece.
Each block must be split in two to obtain 4 equal parts.
Next, you need to split the wood for the workpiece in half again to make 8 equal parts. Usually for small logs this is quite enough. It is 1/8 that will become the riveting blank.
If the ridge is thick, double-row cutting is used, i.e. each of the 8 parts splits into 2 equal parts along the growth rings.
The resulting logs must be split in the radial direction. The result will be 1-2 blanks of smaller size and 2-5 for blanks of larger parameters.
Next you need to cut off the wedge-shaped protrusions and young wood from the bark side. Only after this can the workpiece be dried in an open area or resort to artificial drying.

Manufacturing of rivets

In order to make rivets from the prepared material, you must first prepare drawings and a template for a specific product in accordance with the desired shape. To get ready-made rivets, you will need:

Perform markup.
Make a rough cut of each of the workpieces. Namely, round the outer surface, bevel the edges with an ax.
Perform finishing using a planer, constantly monitoring the result with a template.
Plane the inside of the workpiece with a humpback staple.
Trim the narrow edges and then level their surface with a jointer.

In the process of making barrels, the cooper has to make the tightening hoops himself. The easiest way to get a hoop is from steel tape. To do this, you will need to determine the diameter of the container and add twice the width of the strip to the resulting figure. Next, using a hammer, you need to bend the tape into a ring, drill 2 holes and secure them with rivets. To make a small barrel you will need 2 hoops that will correspond to the diameter of the upper and lower parts of the product.

Bottom assembly and installation

Sand the edges of the boards, fix them on the workbench and divide the radius into 6 parts.
Within the circle, mark the locations of the studs.
Pull out the boards. Drill holes in the edges and drive wooden or metal pins into them.
Connect all the elements tightly and secure with pins, after which you can plan the bottom.
Cut out the bottom, leaving a small margin.
Remove the chamfer with a straight plow and knock down the hoop, loosening the fastening of the rivets.
Insert the bottom into the morning and turn the tub upside down.
Set siege to the hoop.

All that remains is to make a lid for the tub and, after checking the design for strength, begin to use the container. If you like the work done, it makes sense to continue working on making barrels.

Holders of a dying profession work in difficult conditions

This profession is one of the oldest and has long been considered purely male. Nowadays there are no shortage of coopers, or coopers, who make wooden barrels.

Tubs for pickles, tubs for baths, troughs for washing, vats for storing grain have replaced plastic, glass and enamel containers. But it is simply impossible to replace oak barrels, where high-quality wine, cognac and brandy “breathe” and mature. It is oak that imparts amazing flavors to drinks.

Oak barrels, as in ancient times, are collected, fired and steamed by hand. And coopers use the same tools as their distant ancestors.

Why do craftsmen need a circular humpback, why did they previously donate “tartar” for the needs of rocket science, what is the “share of angels”, why do coopers need the marsh grass cattail and why do they look at a light bulb in a spirit storage facility - the MK special correspondent found out after visiting one of the vintage factories wines and cognacs.

"Don't roll a barrel at me"

The cooperage workshop is located at the factory in the former master's carriage house. Wooden barrels are stacked near the squat building, metal rims are strung on a metal pin under a canopy, and there is a pyramid of curved rivets against the wall. Right there on the stool there is a hammer with a wooden head and canvas mittens. It seems that I’m about to see a craftsman in a blouse and a canvas apron...

Muttering: “Terenty salted mushrooms - thirty-three barrels at once,” I pull the heavy door... A cooper in jeans and sneakers is operating in the corner. No chunya on the legs and a hoop on the head. On a large plane, the master processes the edge of one of the rivets - a special board, from which the barrel will later be assembled. The carpenter would whistle! The master's jointer is turned upside down with the knife and remains motionless. And the cooper himself, with deft movements, moves the stave along the plane.

There really are a lot of subtleties in cooperage.

Let's meet the master. Daniil Tarashchan graduated from the Agricultural Institute in Simferopol. But the craving for wood took its toll.

I used to work on woodworking machines in a pioneer camp. He lived next door to the plant, in Shchebetovka. I came to the cooperage workshop for a while in 2002, but it turned out that I stayed for 15 years,” says Daniil. - There are no artificial materials here. Everything we work with was given by nature itself.

His partner Sergei Naumov, putting a rim on the frame of the barrel, admits that he worked with iron for a long time and it took him a lot of time to feel the plasticity of wood.

I was a turner at a military plant in the village of Ordzhonikidze. When the enterprise closed, he came to the cooperage in 1992,” says Sergei Ivanovich. - The most difficult thing for me was to master the original instrument that coopers use. After all, at the military plant they gave us everything - right down to the calipers. And here many instruments were made to order.

The devices are truly outlandish. Coopers use, for example, the circular humpback. Craftsmen plan the inside of the barrel with this plane. And the tension, a wooden block with a handle and a forged hook, is only available to coopers. Using tension, metal rims are put on the frame.

I twirl in my hands a certain wooden device with a piece of saw fixed in it and think: “Oh, it’s not for nothing that history does not know women coopers, not for nothing.”

This is a mortar, which is used to cut a groove for installing bottoms in a barrel,” explains cooper Sergei Naumov.

When I pry a massive barrel with my foot and the hulk moves away, I understand why they were made round, and not rectangular, say, or square. A box with the same salted fish or cucumbers would have to be lifted and dragged, but a barrel can be rolled. The efforts, as they say, are incommensurable.

Coopers notice that the round barrel is the most spacious. They even remembered geometry: “With the same perimeter, a circle has a larger area than any other figure.”

When we say: “Don’t throw a barrel at me,” we hardly think about where this expression came from. And the loaders, it turns out, had an unwritten rule: when unloading a barge, a barrel was not allowed down the inclined gangway if there were people nearby.

The masters say that the barrels were divided into “wet” and “dry”. Accordingly, their dressing was different. “Dry” ones carried tea, tobacco, seeds, and ore. And copper rims were put on barrels of gunpowder. Copper did not produce sparks when the rims were knocked down. “Wet” barrels were intended for wine, beer, vinegar, syrups, and resins. Cheeses in brine and salted meat were also loaded into them.

Also in the old days, bulk products were measured in barrels. If you wanted to buy a tub of grain, you received, by our standards, about 230 kilograms. And some only needed garnets - it came out to a little more than three kilograms.

Bondari is now at his best.

Cradle for wine and cognac

Meanwhile, their teacher, the oldest master Vladimir Fedotovich Kalinichenko, who worked at the plant for 61 years, came to visit Bondarei.

During the war, as a boy, I worked on a collective farm, and in 1947, my uncle got me a job at a winery, in a cooper’s workshop, as an apprentice,” says Vladimir Fedotovich. - So I have one entry left in my work book.

They say about Kalinichenko: “He will make any barrel, jug, tub, tub, or even a mortar for Baba Yaga.”

Both oak, acacia, and beech, chestnut, linden, and aspen can be used.

Acacia barrels withstand transportation well. We used them when we sent wine or cognac to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Leningrad,” says the master. - The best barrel for storing honey is made from linden. Its wood has no taste or smell, and thanks to its softness and uniformity, it cuts well in all directions. The linden tree extracts sugar from the honey, the inner surface of the tub becomes sugared, and a dense film is formed that no longer lets anything through. Except, of course, alcohols.

It is good to store pickles in an aspen tub. The sauerkraut in it remains white and crisp until spring.

But the best wood for a barrel is, of course, oak,” says the cooper. - Its wood is dense, dries well, does not crack, and is quite elastic and viscous. After steaming it becomes flexible and bends well.

It turns out that special preservative substances - tills, which stand in the way of all kinds of putrefactive microbes, also play an important role. But the most important thing is that oak has a porous structure, which allows wine and cognac to “breathe” during aging.

Surprisingly, out of 300 types of oak, only three are suitable for cooperage. Moreover, the oaks used for barrels are at least 75 years old, and the best are considered to be 100–125 years old.

In addition, it is better if the oak is “Spartan”, it will grow slowly, in the highlands, with a lack of water.

On plains and low-lying areas where the soil is moist, oak grows faster, but it also has more porous, loose wood. Barrels made from such wood are less durable and leak more often, says cooper Daniil Tarashchan.

Previously, according to the craftsmen, oaks were brought to the plant mainly from Ukraine - Polesie, Cherkasy region and partly from Maykop and Novorossiysk. But Crimean oak was considered the best for work. It was brought from near Yalta when sanitary cutting of trees was carried out after the fires.

The material arrived at the plant in the form of logs. Then they were sawed or chopped into meter-long dies - future rivets.

There was a case when shell fragments were found in the logs that were brought from Belarus during cutting,” says cooper Sergei. - Oak chocks lay for a long time at the airfield, where fighting took place during the war. When they were riveted, the instruments were almost damaged.

Raw wood is not used for production. The rivets must be “hardened” and dried in the open air.

Nowadays they are increasingly dried in special ovens. But it is advisable for the rivets to lie under a canopy for 20 years (!), says Daniil. - The longer the wood dries, the better. For example, our plant has kept a stock of rivets dating back to Soviet times.

“Ripe” planks are planed, polished and assembled into a frame according to the diameter of the hoops. Now the barrel needs to be bent.

Bend it in two ways. To steam and soften the stave, hot steam is supplied inside. Or they use the old-fashioned method. A barbecue is placed inside the barrel, a fire is lit, and the master wets the inside of the barrel with water all day long. At the same time, a cable is taken, a winch is taken, the steamed frame is gradually pulled from below and bent. The workpiece takes the shape of a barrel. We use both steam and fire.

As soon as the barrel dries out after a couple of months, the craftsmen insert the bottom into the ends. And as a compactor they use marsh grass - cattail.

It is an inert material that has neither taste nor smell. We soak the cattail, fill all the cracks with it from the bottom and top, and the barrel does not leak,” says Daniil.

Coopers harvest cattails themselves. Previously, they went to the Kherson region, to the reservoir. When Crimea became Russian, they began to look for raw materials on the peninsula.

A year ago, we traveled all over Crimea, and only in three places were we able to find the right variety of reeds,” says Sergei.

To bring the barrel to condition and get rid of excess tannins, it is filled with soft water and rinsed several times until the drain water from the black one becomes clear. And then, adding alkali, they also steam it. Only after the “bath with soda ash” is the barrel rinsed and placed in the camp. The cradle for wine and cognac is ready.

Master Daniil Tarashchan.

"The angels drink some of the wine"

At the plant, more than 5 thousand barrels “cradle” and “nurture” alcoholic beverages. And everyone needs to be watched and served.

For us, a barrel is something living,” admits cooper Sergei Naumov. - She is also sick, her rivets are bursting, the barrel is leaking, and we are repairing it and treating it. Cattail is a kind of antiseptic and acts as a bandage.

At the factory, coopers do not sit idle. Spirits can be aged in a barrel for 30–40 years. Then the barrel gets old, it needs to be repaired, fired again, steamed, stuffed. And in the barrel where the wine matured, “tartar” also settles, which needs to be cleaned off.

When aging wine in cool cellars, potassium salts settle on the staves, clog the pores and prevent the wine from breathing and maturing. Sometimes such sediment can even be seen on the cork when you open the bottle. To remove the “tartar”, special scrapers with a blade at the end are used. This work is performed mainly by women, only they are able to climb through a small window into the barrel,” says Daniil. - In Soviet times, “tartar” was collected and donated for the needs of rocket science. Each plant had its own plan. Potassium salts were used in electroplating to tin-plate some joints, providing an easier method of soldering. Now the “stone of tartar” is simply thrown away.

Sometimes coopers have to work in very difficult conditions. To fully understand the specifics of the profession, I go to the second workshop, where cognac spirits are aged in oak barrels. In front of the entrance, there are a bunch of signs with warning signs hanging on the wall: a burning match, a lit cigarette and a human figure are crossed out in red circles... However, there are masks and respirators hanging right there. They warn me: “For the first 15 seconds, breathe as if in severe frost, not fully.” I push the door and... like a fish I begin to gasp for air. Tears run from my eyes. It’s not like I’m breathing deeply, I can’t breathe at all. It seems that alcohol is poured into the air itself... Now I understand how wines and spirits can “breathe” through the pores of an oak barrel.

Of course, there can be no talk of any ventilation. Alcohols mature in semi-darkness. Drafts are contraindicated for them. And part of the evaporated drink is called the “angels' share.”

Here we must remember that winemaking in the Middle Ages was mainly carried out by monks. One day, while opening another barrel of wine, they discovered that there was less drink in it than there was originally. The monastic brethren believed that part of the wine was drunk by angels.

The more humid the air, the less the “angels' share” falls. This is why storage facilities are so common on the islands. Every year, 1 to 3% of the drink evaporates from barrels. Coopers say that cognac becomes cognac only after it is “sipped by the angels.”

I couldn’t stand it in the warehouse for even five minutes, and the coopers work there for hours.

If necessary, we remove barrels from the camp for repairs. The contents are temporarily poured into a titanium container; it is an inert metal. It's not that hot right now. And in the summer, at +35 degrees in the shade, it’s really hard to work in a spirit storage facility,” says Daniil. - Respirators and masks practically do not help. We look at the light bulb, when the rainbow reaches the entire spectrum of colors, we understand that it is time to leave the hall. The retina of the eyes is burned so badly by alcohol vapor.

With good care, a barrel can last about a hundred years. The plant still uses Hungarian-made barrels, which were brought in immediately after the war.

Their staves are not sawn, but split, of excellent quality. And the barrel itself with the window is made very beautifully,” says the oldest cooper, Vladimir Kalinichenko. - In the 60s, we received alcohol from Cyprus in French barrels. The oak there is initially very good - from the famous Limousin region. All these barrels are still used in production.

During the Soviet Union, there were 12 coopers at the plant.

We made barrels, we were paid from a deciliter (10 liters). They received 200–300 rubles a month. And on bottles (large oak barrels up to 20 thousand liters. - Auto.) and more came out,” says Vladimir Fedotovich. - Numbered staves for them were sent to us from Novorossiysk.

I used to wonder how the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes managed to live in a barrel. When I saw a quarry barrel at the factory, I realized that it could actually be a home.

Now there are two coopers left at the plant, and their salary with all bonuses is 16 thousand rubles. And more and more often this profession is now called a dying one.

Masters say that in the past, in the neighborhood, in Kerch, there were entire cooperage factories, because fish was salted in barrels. Wine, rosin, and paint were transported in barrels. And then wooden containers were replaced by practical and inexpensive plastic. Now barrels as such remain only in wineries.

What can we say if the Labor Code (LLC) of Ukraine did not even include such a profession as a cooper. We were listed as cabinet makers,” says Daniil Tarashchan.

Masters complain that nowadays alcoholic drinks for the mass consumer are not aged in barrels. To reduce costs and reduce production time, stainless steel tanks are increasingly being used, into which oxygen is injected for oxidation. To make the drink acquire shades of fruit, vanilla and wood sugar, oak shavings or wood chips are thrown into the container.

After all, the price of a standard barrel sometimes reaches 2 thousand dollars.

No matter how long the life of a barrel is, it also has to be retired. Throughout the plant there are flower bowls made from sawn barrels. Masters say that when burned, alcohol-contained, spent rivets produce luxurious coals for cooking barbecue.

And in Scotland, for example, the rivets of old decommissioned barrels are straightened using a special technology and made into parquet. Owners of bars and cafes are immensely proud if they manage to make at least the steps in front of the entrance from such planks “with history.”

What unites people who bear surnames such as Bondarenko, Bocharov, Tonnelier, Cooper, Kadar or Fassbinder? Yes, most likely you guessed it right. The ancestors of these people were engaged in cooperage. The cooper profession was very respected, and barrels became a real symbol.

In fact, it was the barrel that gave the names to the designations of mass and volume - ton and barrel. And as for cucumbers, herring, beer, you understand that only in a barrel can they be truly tasty and healthy, because this is a living organism in which everything is distributed correctly.

The design of a barrel is actually not very complicated, but if you decide to make a barrel yourself, you will most likely encounter a problem, because its manufacture requires special skills.

Initially barrels They were made by craftsmen, and they were riveted entirely by hand. It is now possible to make barrels using hoops, rivets and rosettes made on machines. However, even now you can notice that some operations are still performed manually.

If you see what a fully assembled barrel base looks like, you'll notice that it's a little rough around the edges and not as nice or well-kept as the original might have been. This is primarily due to the fact that only after processing it can be coated with wax or varnish, which will show that the barrel has a noble appearance.

When it comes to cooperage, a barrel is just one of the options that coopers have to offer. The main thing is that the walls of the vessel are made of planks connected to each other.

They knew about the barrel in ancient times

By the way, the technology when wooden parts are bent was created a long time ago. It was first practiced in ancient times, when wooden boats were built. Then the coopers noticed this ability of the tree and decided to borrow the idea. But on the ship, a large barrel played a very important role, because it became a real container that fit into multi-story stacks in the holds.

A tub would not be able to withstand this, but a barrel could, because it was created in such a way as to withstand pressure. It’s easy to roll the barrel rather than carry it, and you can change the direction at any time. It is very durable, so it serves its owners for a very long time. When the vessel has a regular cylindrical shape, it is harder to roll.

In Soviet times, barrels were used as containers for meat, pickles or fish. Nowadays plastic containers are already used. Previously, there was a special company “Vinstandard”, which produced fonts, tubs and other wooden objects.

Barrels intended for storing wine were also made here. By the way, they have special requirements.

In fact, a wine barrel has a denser wood. When the density is low, the permeability of the barrel increases, and gas exchange is more intense. This is completely unacceptable if you are making wine, because it is important for you that it is not only rich, but also does not evaporate.

The best raw material for making a wine barrel is Caucasian oak, which grows in rocky soil. The bottom line is that it has quite deep roots, and the annual growth is not very large.

The barrel is already done, there is a little left

When the barrel is already completely made, its surface must be scraped. The barrel must be dressed in hoops that will fit perfectly to the surface, and this is very important so that it does not fall apart at the most inopportune moment.

Once the hole for the tap is made, all you have to do is treat the surface with beeswax, which is necessary for the barrel to be airtight. And it’s beautiful when it has a pleasant yellowish sheen.

Many coopers are convinced that assembling a barrel using only book materials is simply unrealistic, because there are many dangers that you will not even guess about, since they will lie in wait for you almost constantly during assembly.

It's a matter of the right heat and the tightening of the rods. You can place the rivets randomly, rather than alternating them, then the barrel will also only live for three months. It’s impossible to know everything about everything right away, so it’s better to immediately order a barrel from professionals.

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