Bourbon Barrel Cabinet Plans for Dummies

whiskey barrel cabinet

We've noticed that even during the short time we've been writing this blog, that more and more women are writing do-it-yourself blogs with plans for furniture and other woodworking projects. We say "Good for them!" Assuming, of course, that a) they didn't just rip off the plans from someone else and b) the plans work. We aren't overly impressed by the thousands of "upcycling" plans for pallets, but hey: it's your furniture... As we said, the plans have to work before we're impressed, which is why so much of what we find in the eHow.com niches disappoints us, like the Hunker.com post "How to Make a Bourbon Barrel Cabinet" by Flora Richards-Gustafson disappointed us so.

Richards-Gustafson didn't include a ink to whatever plans she cribbed from (if there actually were any), so we don't know whether someone else was monumentally unfamiliar with wooden barrels or it was just Flora. We do know that, despite linking to a website for a company that actually builds whiskey barrels, she didn't know much about them. Perhaps that's why she thought that,

"After the barrel is empty, the distillery may use it to create whiskey or sell it to either whiskey distilleries or the public." Not quite: barrels are typically shipped to whisky (i.e., "scotch") distillers, vintners, or even breweries. But that wasn't Flora's biggest failing. No, her problem was pretty simple: step one of her eighteen steps was, "Remove the metal bands that are around the outside of the barrel. If they do not slide off easily, use a hammer and a scrap piece of lumber to tap them off the barrel." Flora, Flora, Flora: the metal bands are what holds the wooden staves in the shape of a barrel. Remove them, and the barrel simply falls apart! And R-G doesn't just remove the bands, she puts them back on and then removes then again! What a yutz!

Somewhere in there (along about step 10) Flora says to cut your opening:

"Place the cellophane tape across six oak strips on the barrel so it covers the wood from band to band. The tape will help keep the strips of wood together. Use a circular saw to cut across the oak strips along the lower rim of the top band and the top rim of the band on the bottom."

Now she knows that the staves will fall apart without the bands! How come she didn't know that before?

We found a YouTube video for making one of these cabinets, and their first step is to tighten the bands and secure them more tightly. Nowhere do they take them off... Then again, these guys didn't qualify for a Dumbass of the Day award like Flora did...

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