Project Information
Decided to participate in my first LJ swap and it turned out to be a lot of fun. Of course I decided to not make it easy on myself and picked something that definitely stretched my abilities. With the exception of the bottom of the tankard, all wood came from rough timber.
Materials used for the tankard were cherry, silver maple and red oak. Bottle opener is Mulberry I believe with homemade eastern red cedar dowels.
Once I had milled up the Cherry and Silver Maple, I followed most of the steps from this Instructable. However, for the bottom I went a slightly different route. I envisioned a small lip on the bottom, similar to real beer mugs. So I broke out my dad's old craftsman router table and proceeded to route dadoes about a 1/2" up from the bottom of each stave. Doing it over, i would have done this step before I cut each stave to it's final size because it was extremely hard to hold each piece without having it move while cutting. Once I had all the pieces ready, I taped them together to get the size of the bottom circle needed and cut that out. Then the handle was cut out and shaped and holes drilled for the dowels.
After a nerve racking glue up was done, some block planing and a lot of hand sanding got the outside ready. Handle was glued on and I finished it with two coats of wipe on poly. My original intent was to use brewer's pitch or a food safe epoxy to finish the inside, but ultimately I left it unfinished as I couldn't decide and ran out of time. That's my one regret on this project. Thanks for reading.
Here's a few pics during the build
Cherry
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Silver maple
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Handle
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Couple shots of the bottom
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Materials used for the tankard were cherry, silver maple and red oak. Bottle opener is Mulberry I believe with homemade eastern red cedar dowels.
Once I had milled up the Cherry and Silver Maple, I followed most of the steps from this Instructable. However, for the bottom I went a slightly different route. I envisioned a small lip on the bottom, similar to real beer mugs. So I broke out my dad's old craftsman router table and proceeded to route dadoes about a 1/2" up from the bottom of each stave. Doing it over, i would have done this step before I cut each stave to it's final size because it was extremely hard to hold each piece without having it move while cutting. Once I had all the pieces ready, I taped them together to get the size of the bottom circle needed and cut that out. Then the handle was cut out and shaped and holes drilled for the dowels.
After a nerve racking glue up was done, some block planing and a lot of hand sanding got the outside ready. Handle was glued on and I finished it with two coats of wipe on poly. My original intent was to use brewer's pitch or a food safe epoxy to finish the inside, but ultimately I left it unfinished as I couldn't decide and ran out of time. That's my one regret on this project. Thanks for reading.
Here's a few pics during the build
Cherry
Silver maple
Handle
Couple shots of the bottom
