My name's Aaron Massey
from mrfixitdiy.com. And today I'm going to
build a coffee table out of an old wine barrel. Now if you're going to
be building a barrel table, obviously having
access to a barrel is the biggest thing. You could check online, on
Craigslist, flea markets, local businesses might be
selling them sometimes. But I often find
it's helpful just to go straight to the source. Fortunately for me,
that's exactly what I did. And all it took was
a few hour drive. The Carhartt vineyard
and winery is located about two hours
north of Los Angeles in the heart of the
Santa Ynez Valley in Los Alamos, California. There you'll find the
world's smallest tasting room, which checks in
at only 99 square feet. Fortunately, they've got
a really awesome patio that's loaded full of
all sorts of furniture made from wine
barrels that I was really excited to check out. It's here that I met up with
Chase Carhartt whose parents Mike and Brooke started the
winery on their family ranch back in 1996. Chase grew up on the
ranch and has since gone on to study wine
making all around the world in order to bring his
experience and knowledge back to the family business. Chase gave me a one on one
tour of every step of the wine making process, which is so
much more involved than I would have ever imagined. Their sophisticated
wine operation takes place all inside
these 100-year-old barns that have been converted
to run on solar power and remodeled on the inside
to be climate controlled. From grape growing all
the way to pouring, they take a great deal
of pride in every aspect of their business. And every employee
that works for them is hands on every
step of the way. With the tour out of the way,
it was time to select a barrel. Vineyards sometimes
get rid of old barrels or recycle them because of
slight defects in the barrel itself. So Chase set some aside
for me to choose from. I definitely wanted to use a
barrel that had the Carhartt branding on it, so we
settled on a barrel and got it all loaded
up in the truck. I can't thank Chase
enough for his hospitality in showing me the winery,
and now it's back to L.A. and back to the build. So I've got the barrel
back to the shop now. To get started on our build, we
have to cut our barrel in half. But there's a couple
of things to keep in mind before we do that. Number one, we have to measure
exactly where the center point of this barrel is, which
can be a little bit tricky. And make sure that we
cut it exactly in half. If we cut it exactly
in half, then we'll have two halves which we
could actually make two tables out of instead of one. Number two, when we
cut this metal banding, the barrel is going
to want to fly apart. It's loose pieces of
wood held together by this metal strapping. Before we actually
do any cutting, we need to drill holes
in this metal banding and put a couple of
screws in around where we're going to cut it. That way when we cut the barrel
in half, the metal banding will still help keep
the barrel together without it flying apart. There are two features of
this barrel that I really want to keep. Number one is the
Carhartt Vineyard logo. I'm going to cut it in half. So that I can feature that logo. The second thing is the bung. The bung hole is a little
thing on the side where they pour the wine out from. That's on the other side. Unfortunately, the
two don't line up. I'm going to have to spin
this lid once I can loosen up this strapping a little bit. I'm going to have to cut up
around it, rotate the lid, figure out exactly
where half is, and then cut it so that the
whole thing can line up the way that I want it. All right, we've got
our barrel cut in half. And we've got it held together
with these ratchet straps just to keep its shape for now. I took off a little
bit of the banding to drill some of the
holes where we're going to put in
some carriage bolts to hold everything together. Really that's what we're
going to kind of do with this for now. What we need to do is
we need to shift gears a little bit, focus on
working on the base. The base is going to hold
the barrel table together. Make sure that it
stays nice and tight. Once we get the
base together, we can set the barrel down inside
of it and it'll keep the shape. So we don't have to worry
about it flaying out a little bit like that. I'm going to be building that
out of some reclaimed lumber that I picked up from
a local lumber yard and it's going to be two
legs that are held together with a stretcher. I've cut four
pieces of our lumber here to 28 inches, which
is two inches wider than our barrel at the distance
where I want to set the legs. We've got about 6 and
1/4 inches on each piece. I need about 12 inches
of rise on each leg in order to get the barrel up
to the height that we need. These by themselves
are not high enough to get us up to that height. So what I'm going to
do next is I'm actually going to take two of these
and join them together with the biscuit joiner. We're going to glue it all
up, clamp everything together, and then we'll turn
these two by sixes into basically a big 2 by 12. And each one of these
will then act as our legs. And we'll cut out
our little groove where our barrel will
inset inside of that. Once the glue is dry on the
leg, I position the barrel on the leg to figure out where
we need to cut our radius so that the barrel can
sit down inside it. We want the final resting
height of the table to be about 18
inches, and there's going to be about a
3/4 inch foot added on the base of each leg. So I'm measuring to make
sure that the final height of the table is around
18 inches and it leaves room for our stretcher to go
underneath the table, which will be made out
of a four by four. This can get a little tricky
because the leg is actually going to be positioned between
the second and third metal band, and the barrel
tapers outward as it goes towards the middle. So once I get it
roughly in position, I actually put my pencil up
against the side of the barrel where the legs are
going to go, and then I try to keep that
pressure along the side of the barrel in the same
spot as I move around it so that I can scribe the radius. Now obviously this isn't
completely precise, but it's good enough
for what we need it for and we can go back in and
clean it up a little bit later. With our radius marked, I
use the jigsaw to cut it out. The blade on my jigsaw is
actually set at a slight angle. Around three degrees to
compensate for the fact that the barrel bulges out. This isn't really the
best tool for this, but it is the best tool
that I currently own for it. Ideally I'd be using a
bandsaw to cut this out, but since I don't have one,
I have to use my jigsaw. Now that we've got
the first leg cut out, we can actually use it as a
stencil to mark our second leg. The only thing to keep in
mind is that one side of it is actually a little bit deeper
than the other side because of the angle of our blade. So we need to make sure
that the shallower side is the side we mark. That way when we cut
it the exact same way, we'll have a mirror image. With our legs cut, I can test
fit the barrel onto the legs and make sure that it's level. I position the legs on each side
between the second and third band so that I know they're
equidistant from each end. Once I check it for level,
I can measure how big our stretcher needs to be. I'm cutting the stretcher
out of a piece of four by four reclaim lumber I also
picked up from the lumber yard. Before I install
the stretcher, I'm going to install the feet that
go on the bottom of the legs. They're made out of one
by four reclaimed red oak that are mitered to 45
degrees on each end and are two inches longer on each end
than the width of our leg. Next I'll line up our stretcher
by measuring the center points on all three
pieces and lining them up. Then I'll mark the
outside of the stretcher on the feet I just installed
so that I can chisel out that piece so the stretcher
will sit flush with each leg. To install the stretcher,
I glue each end, then drill a recessed
pilot hole into each leg before driving in a 4 and
1/2 inch lagbolt. The lagbolt is going to pull
everything nice and tight and I use some pipe
clamps in order to hold it in place while I install it. Our base for the
table is assembled, and before I go and
attach the barrel to it, now is a good time for me to
put a coat of stain on it. Because it's going to be
a lot easier to access all the little ins and outs of
it before the barrel is on it and makes it a little bit
harder to maneuver around. I'm not going to do a
finish coat on it right now. But I'm going to
get some stain on it and that way when we
go to finish it later, we won't have to
worry about trying to stain all these little cracks
and things that are really hard to reach when
the table's heavy. While the stain
on the base dries, I'm going to go back to working
on the barrel a little bit and get it sanded, and
cleaned up a little bit so that we can stain this. And then put the
two pieces together. While the stain
dries on the barrel, I spray paint each band black
because I think it looks better and then I reattach the bands
with some carriage bolts. Our barrel and our
base are now stained and the bands are
back on the barrel. Still have the
tie straps on just to hold it together for now. The next step is to actually
put the barrel in the base and then attach it. Mother of God! With the barrel
installed in the base, we can finally remove
the ratchet straps that are holding it. I started on the upper
frame last night. That's going to give our table a
nice clean look when it's open. And I wasn't able to
finish it so today I'm going to finish that. Making that out of red oak. Some kind of cleaned
up milled red oak instead of the reclaimed look. I like it a little bit
nicer on the inside here, because this is going to
be exposed when we open it up. I'm using the
biscuit joiner again to carve a little biscuit
in each mitered corner. And then I'm gluing
it all together and clamping it in place with
this cool little Bessey strap clamp. The overall dimensions
of the frame are 34 and half by 28 inches. And it's designed to sit
right over top of the barrel and obscure the raw edges. Next I tipped the
barrel on its side and polyurethane the inside
using some spray polyurethane. I've never used this before,
but because of the shape of the barrel and
the ease of use, I figured it would
be worth a shot and it actually came
out really nice. From there I can move on to
putting together the top. The table tabletop
itself is going to be made out of
pallet wood that I have. I'm going to bust
apart some pallets. It's cheap. In fact it's free. It's got a real
rustic reclaimed look. And is good enough for
what we need it for. And what we're focusing
on is that it's free. Before I run the pallet pieces
through the saws, I go around and I punch out all
the remaining nail pieces that are inside. Now I'm going to take
the pieces of pallet wood and clean them up
on the table saw and try and get some nice
straight lines for joining it together. Because the pallet wood
is all different sizes and doesn't have very many
straight edges to join together, I decided to make a
little jig for my table saw. I'm using a piece
of straight lumber and attaching it to
the pallet pieces. I set the height of my
blade only deep enough to go through the
pallet wood, and then I use that straight
piece against my fence to trim off the uneven
edges of the pallet wood to create a straight edge. Once I get a straight edge on
one side, I can adjust my fence and then send it back
through a second time and get a straight
edge on the other side. Once again, this is not
the best tool for this job. But it is the best tool that
I currently have for this job. Ideally I'd want to
use a jointer for this. But since mine is about 50
years old, missing pieces, and needs refurbishing and I
haven't gotten around to it yet, this is what I got to use. With the pieces ripped
on the table saw, I take them over the
chop saw and cut them to about 39 inches,
which is slightly larger than our finished
table size will be, but I want a little
extra just in case. From there I lay out the pallet
pieces, and then mark lines across each piece where the
mortises for the biscuit joiner are going to go. It doesn't really matter where
the lines are, just so long as they line up to
each other so that when we carve the mortises,
they're in the same spot across from each other. From there we use
our biscuit joiner to carve mortises in
each piece, and then it's one massive glue up. While the glue up sets up, we
can scrape off the excess glue and then we can go back to
staining the upper frame and getting that
installed on the base. I'm using some wood glue,
getting the frame in place, and then attaching it
with some brad nails. It'd the final day of
the coffee table build. The base of the table
is pretty much finished, which means we can spend all
our effort on the table top. I spent some time last
night sanding a bunch. Once again, the sanders, not
the most efficient way to do it, but it's what I've got. It's a little extra work. But if you're afraid
of a little extra work, you're probably not
watching this video. So who cares? One thing I should
mention, if you're going to be using
pallet wood, make sure you wear a mask
when you're sanding it. They put all sorts of
chemicals and stuff in these so they can be weather
resistant and last a long time. So if you're going
to be sanding them, make sure that you wear a
mask just to protect yourself. With both sides of the table top
sanded, I can cut it to length. I'm making a mark at 38 and 1/2
inches, which gives us a two inch overhang on each end. And then I'm using my level
as a makeshift tract saw, clamping it in place, and
then using it as a guide so that it can cut
a straight line. Next time attaching a
little bit of a backbone on the underside of the table
to add a little strength to our tabletop. So I'm using some
leftover red oak to create two little
backbones that will go on the underside
of our tabletop and give it a little
extra strength. From there, it's all about
the finishing touches. Using some wood filler, I
fill in some of the nail holes in the tabletop. We've got to stain
on the table top, add a couple coats
of polyurethane, do some touch up paint on
the base and the hardware, and then this table's finished
and I can't wait for you guys to check it out. Well guys, here it is. The finished wine
barrel coffee table. I hope you guys
enjoyed this project. If you did enjoy
this project video, please hit that like button
and leave a comment down below and let me know. Also be sure to
subscribe to Carhartt for more awesome projects. And if you want to check
out more of my content, please visit my YouTube
channel at youtube.com/mrfixit. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next time. Today I'm here to show you
how to turn an old upright piano into a speakeasy
style hidden bar. During the prohibition
era of the 1920s, illegal alcohol was a highly
sought after commodity, giving rise to famous
bootlegging gangsters like Al Capone. These gangsters peddled
their illegal booze through speakeasies, often
inside existing clubs or businesses so as to not
raise suspicion of the police. Owners of these speakeasies
went through great lengths to hide their illegal
alcohol from being discovered by the police, including hiding
it inside everyday objects.
