A small barrel for a Newfoundland dog

After the barrel sitting idle on a shelf for a couple of months, I finally took the "trouble" of getting it onto Bertha for a quick photo.

I removed the barrel immediately after the pictures were taken, but Bertha actually didn't seem to mind the small barrel hanging by her collar.

Getting a dog to pose is not that simple..

Bertha with a small barrel.

Now with her eyes closed.

Making a small barrel 4, completion

After discovering that the stock was not quite as good as it ought to be, I sort of lost interest in the project. So I guess it is a reminder that once in a while decent stock is a prerequisite for a success.

I tried to weigh the pros and cons of continuing or abandoning the project altogether. In the end I decided that instead of making a barrel for rum or brandy, I could make it for dog treats. Since they are not liquid, the barrel will work for that.

I had made a couple of ends/bottoms for the barrel out of spruce, and these were made into octagonals to fit the inside.
The hoops are made out of a piece of copper tube that was split down the middle using a hacksaw. After splitting , it was flattened on an anvil by means of a hammer. The hoop was riveted together using small pieces of copper wire from an old electrical cable as rivets.
Each hoop received a total of six rivets. five to hold the hoop together and one rivet for holding the eye that will allow the barrel to be attached to the collar of Bertha.

I had measured each hoop directly from the barrel, in such a way that it was a bit too small so I could rely on it to be stretched a bit and gain a good tight fit.
The hoop was first negotiated into place by tapping with a hammer on top of a piece of wood. Once it was level with the edge of the barrel, I switched to a drift wedge. A regular piece of flat bar would have worked equally well, but this was just at hand and had a perfect size for the job.

Normally I think the hoops are expected to stay put without any fixations, but I didn't want to take that risk with this project. I made four small rivets and attached each hoop with two of them.

Finally I sawed of the ends of the barrel down to the edge of the hoops and sanded the outside flush.
I didn't drill a hole for the dog treats yet, because I think a Forstner bit will be better than a regular metal drill bit like those we have out here. So I'll do that once I get home.

The barrel ended up being 6" high and 3 3/8" in diameter at the middle.

The barrel next to a standard can of mineral water.

Material for the hoops.

Coarse work with the riveting.

Setting the hoop.

Tool used for further setting the hoop.

The hose clamp is removed to go further.

Rivet head made on 1.5 mm electrical cable strand

Finished barrel.

Making a small barrel 3, regrouping.

My barrel wasn't completely symmetrical, and I suspected the reason to be that the individual staves were not equally flexible.
I spent some time to get them all a bit more uniform in thickness and then tried to reassemble the barrel.
It still wasn't as I wanted it. After some time fumbling with the hose clamps, it suddenly detonated between my hands.

None of the pieces were damaged, but I could see two staves that had significantly more of a bend than the rest of them. I decided that it was time to regroup the project by only using 8 staves instead of the original 10. This will mean that the volume of the barrel will be smaller, so I'll probably have to either make it a short walk with the dog, or just walk the dog myself without any company.

Regrouping meant that I had to alter the angle on the staves, but that was a quick job. I had a bit of  a problem getting the barrel raised using the blue masking tape due to its unwillingness to stick to anything, so I upgraded to some duct tape.
I am fairly sure it isn't a traditional way of doing it, but it sure works great.

A hose clamp was mounted on each end, and the barrel looked OK.
I decided that I should make the barrel shorter due to its smaller diameter in order for it to look good.
I got the idea that if I kept the hose clamps on while I completed the work on the barrel, I could round and sand it also where the hoops would be attached. In the end I will saw off the part where the hose clamp has been.

The barrel was rounded and sanded. I measured the outside diameter of one end with a piece of copper wire, and used that to calculate the size of the corresponding bottom.
The oak has got a lot of cracks, so I was a bit uncertain if it would make an OK bottom. I sawed out a piece and marked a circle on it. Immediately after sawing the bottom out it broke in two.
More regrouping..
Spruce might not be the classic choice for coopering, but on the other hand, a Newfoundland isn't a classic barrel bearing dog, so a swift decision was made to use spruce.

After filing the disc round, I used a chisel to chamfer the edges so it could eventually fit into the groove that I was going to make.

I tried to use my router plane instead of a croze, but it didn't work very well, so I guess I'll have to do a bit of tool making to proceed.

Sanded barrel with a spruce bottom and the router plane.

Set up for sanding.

Broken oak bottom.

Making a small barrel 2, getting by using standard tools.

It seems natural that since coopering is a trade of its own, there are some special tools that goes along with that trade.
I haven't got any of those tools. But I have a lot of different tools and spare parts that can be used on board a ship. Some of those can often be used for other things.
Today I tried to use hose clamps for holding the barrel together before making the hoops.

Before I got to that part, I had made the last staves, and they were planed on the outside.
I planed the edges to an 18 degrees angle, so I would end up having 10 staves each with a total angle of 36 degrees.

This is where the challenges started.
At first I tried to hold the staves by hand inserting them in a ring that I had made from some old copper strands from an old electrical cable.
That didn't work.

The next attempt I tried to hold each stave in place using blue masking tape attached to the middle of the staves but with sufficient space between each so they could touch in the ends.
That wasn't a success.

Third attempt was to lay the staves closely together, so they touched at one end. Each stave was taped to its neighbour and finally put on an end and the last piece of tape held the stack together.
This seemed like the way to go.
I attached the copper wire ring, and made another one a bit smaller.

The assembly was rather flimsy, so I added another copper ring on the middle. That made it a bit more solid.
I found a couple of plastic cable tied and added those too. Then I removed the masking tape.

Getting the other end of the barrel closer together wasn't that easy. I was afraid to break the copper wire, and the cable ties weren't easy to tighten either.
That is when I decided to find some hose clamps.

At first I attached the hose clamps on the ends and tightened them up a bit. Then cam a larger model for the fat part of the barrel.
It started to look more like a barrel and less like a bunch of sticks held together with masking tape.

A thing that I noticed was that the individual staves didn't bend the same. I knew what the problem was, so there was no point in continuing with the hose clamps before I had fixed it.
The staves are not the same thickness.
I had gambled a bit that it probably wouldn't matter, but apparently it does matter.
Now I just have to find a way to make them a bit more uniform in thickness and then I can continue with the hose clamps.

The end result of the experiments so far.

Staves and copper wire.

This didn't work.

This helped.

Success is just around the corner.

Clamping using copper wire.

Moving into the plastic age using cable ties.

Hose clamps work great for this.

Making a small barrel.

The other day we received some stores for our main engines. The stores were delivered on a single use pallet.
On this pallet the two lower stretchers were made out of oak. The top of the pallet was some other type of hardwood that I haven't been able to identify yet.

Not surprisingly, I disassembled the pallet to save the wood.
The problem with the oak is that the nails had penetrated rather deeply into the wood.
There was something like 8" between the nail holes, so I tried to think of a small thing that could be made out of short pieces of oak.
There are of course many things that would fit in this category, but I decided that a small barrel similar to those depicted around the neck of a saint Bernard dog would be interesting to make.
Bertha will end up having the same size as a saint Bernard, so I see no reason why she shouldn't be able to have a small barrel of brandy fixed to her collar for taking a photo.

I have never tried my hands out on coopering, so this will be a journey into the unknown in that respect.
The diameter of the barrel will be such that I can make the ends from the oak as well, I am able to make a circular piece of 2.75"" in diameter. The barrel will be 7.25" in length and probably end up having a diameter on the middle of 3.75" That is if everything goes as planned.

I have read somewhere that if you split the wood for the staves, you can reduce the risk of the barrel starting to leak. This makes sense if you use some sort of ring porous wood. I think that oak is ring porous, so I am going to try to follow that advice.

After sawing my piece of oak into the lengths between the nail holes, I split the pieces using an axe.

After splitting I used my plane to flatten the individual staves a bit on the outside.
My first idea was to make them exactly the same thickness from the start, but I changed the approach and only flattened the outside and then I marked out the shape and used a hack saw to make the curved shape.

Once all the staves are done I'll try to plane them all to the same thickness.

So far I have experienced that splitting stock is not a guarantee for a flat piece of wood.
It might have something to do with the fact that the grain isn't the straightest on the wood that I have at hand.
Some of the staves that I had split also had cracks running the entire length down the middle, so far from all my staves could be used.
I am also beginning to suspect that there might be a reason for coopers to use special tools for their job, cause a regular smoothing plane with a scrub iron doesn't seem to be the most efficient tool so far for this project. (Not that such a thing has ever held me back)

Split staves before sorting.

Flattish and shaped staves.

The selection of stock.