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Manbench Industries; Purveyors of general mayhem since 1994, a blog to follow the crazed, possibly deranged projects and emotive musings, of an undergraduate engineer, and an apprentice organ builder who have always felt they were born in the wrong age. Follow us as we, re-write history, learn lost skills, discover strange new worlds, break things, rant at things, mend things, make new things and generally find ways of passing the day instead of doing "proper work" !

Sunday 26 January 2014

Roll out the barrel!


Having started brewing my own beer, and being the proud owner of a beer engine (incidentally the best birthday present ever) I decided it was time to have my own mini pub. 

I decided it would be unfeasible to turn over an entire room if the house to a pub (regardless of how cool that would be) so I realised a movable mini bar unit would be ideal. I realised quickly that a barrel would be the ideal size and shape for a bar, being the right height and of sufficient size to hold an adequate amount of beer inside for pumping (considering I also can't turn a cellar over to beer storage!)

Then followed the ridiculous saga of trying to find a barrel. Long story short I had no idea how bloody difficult it would be to find a barrel at a reasonable price in this part of the country. I did eventually find one however and thus begins a new chapter on this blog of building the Barrel Bar.

To date I have secured the iron bands in the necessary places to facilitate the removal of the back section of the barrel. This was done using Roundhead screws that will later be filled to resemble securing rivets on the iron bands. They were placed to secure the staves and top when the rear was later removed. I then carefully removed the rear, sawing between staves where possible give the cleanest straightest cut possible,to allow the fitting of a tank and the beer engine.


The cat enjoyed the newly formed den...


To follow, details of the bar-top, (possibly copper) installation of the pump, finishing, and anything else I end up doing to it!

The Carpenter.

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