Whiskey Barrel Stave Cleaning Process
Whiskey Barrel Stave | When I received my first barrel almost 10 years ago I had no idea how hard it was going to be to prep and cleaning barrel staves and heads into usable wood so I could create the wild ideas rattling around in my head. If you’ve ever seen the inside of a retired barrel it’s generally not pretty. Wine barrels tend to get moldy, have rock hard sediment stuck to the inside and are generally gross. They often can smell even worse depending on how old they were and if they were completely drained before retirement. However, whiskey barrels are most often much worse. Cleaning a whiskey barrel stave and the charred insides of those barrels creates a dust that gets EVERYWHERE and will make you look like you just pulled a shift in a coal mine. Needless to say it’s an exhaustingly dirty job that used to take us hours just to clean and sand a few staves depending on how gross they were.
Back then there wasn’t a whole lot of craftsmen working with wine barrels like there is today and it’s still a niche community because barrels just aren’t that easy to get everywhere, like dimensional lumber is. The point is: there wasn’t much in the way of resources to ask around on how best to clean barrels. Besides, I tend to be a busy guy and this was just a hobby at the time. I just wanted to blow off some steam after working on my computer for long hours at a time and build something with my hands. I wasn’t on Social Media much or part of any woodworking community. I didn’t want to “waste time” spending endless hours of research on the computer or my phone on what tools and techniques MIGHT be out there. I was starting this journey to take a break from those darn digital screens. I had some minor knowledge passed down to me from my grandpa, dad, friends, and bosses from my early construction jobs as a teen. I like to learn from doing mostly, so I grabbed a hand-me-down sander and went to town. If felt great at first, but it wasn’t long until I realized I was getting tired and was hardly making any progress, and I hadn’t even started building anything yet.
I remember being a little disappointed, but still determined and excited for what I could make with these former beverage agers. I decided I needed a wire brush. So I picked up some big hand brushes thinking they would easily rip off the nastiness from these stubborn staves. HA! I was in for a rude surprise. That is to say, I gave one whiskey barrel stave a good brushing and really didn’t get much farther than I did when sanding. I could see the wires were making a better difference, but I just don’t possess the strength, speed, and stamina it takes to manually scrub away the grunge to anything usable in any kind of reasonable time frame. So, next I picked up some wire brush bits for a drill and BINGO! I found a reasonable solution!
The wire brush bits coupled with my drill made all the difference. I was able to strip them down so I could sand them up in an acceptable amount of time. Time I was comfortable allocating to my new hobby and it meant I could get to creatively building much sooner! YAY!
I went to town building all kinds of different pieces for our home at my lovingly excited wife’s request. The more I built the more our home became a place of comfort and escape. Eventually our extended family and friends took notice and started requesting pieces from us, asking how much to pay for them. A dream was forming!
What I had worked, but there still had to be a better way for cleaning a whiskey barrel stave.
Skipping ahead a few years and my little hobby turned into a lucrative home business. Demand was rising and I was having a hard time keeping up with orders. I had to find ways to build faster without cutting quality corners. I realized that stripping and cleaning barrel staves from that pesky stubborn grime was still taking a long time. Fighting that drill was tiring and SUPER messy. I’d have to keep stopping to brush away or vacuum off the never-ending silt created by these wildly whirling metal scrubbers. Plus, more often than not the bit would catch an edge of the stave and send the whole chaos into my shirt or off around to the cleaner sides of the stave permanently scratching a surface that didn’t need it. “….Great. More time sanding to fix that.” There had to be a better way.
By this time, I was part of a fledgling woodworking community on Instagram and I was gaining a following with my silly dancing antics and woodworking. One day scrolling through IG I happened across a wonderful dude, Robert, who had recently invented a new tool that was designed to strip things clean and FAST! I watched as he shared different videos of him using it and others who smartly picked this incredible tool. I was blown away! He offered various drums for ripping off unwanted gunk including a wire brush roller. It looked easy to hold and keep on track, plus you could hook a shop vac directly to it. “…What?!?!” So I took a chance and reached out to Robert directly after interacting with him and his posts building a friendly relationship over time. I asked if he’d be willing to take a chance on a fella who was strapped for cash at the time, but had a decent-for-the-community following and audience. I explained my situation and what I did, although he already knew who I was, and asked if he’d be willing to send me one of his incredible babies in exchange for being showcased on my feed.
At this point you should understand on Social Media if you offer something that someone wants you’re going to be hit up to “collab” and send over “free samples” often and mostly shamelessly. However, Robert, while being cautious and being the amazing man he is, decided to take a chance on me and send me a surplus tool he had at the time. It was a right-place-right-time kind of opportunity and it was heaven sent! My parents lovingly gifted me a coveted wire brush roller and I was off to the races! I had my very own Restorer.
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Since our business was growing, I needed more help and by now my incredible wife had jumped in to help with our new business. Soon after we recruited our 2 oldest kids to help, our oldest daughter and oldest son. Our son’s main job was to help me cleaning whiskey barrel staves and he quickly became GOOD at it, but it was a hard job and I felt bad as he fought with that tornado of a drill/wire brush concoction. I needed to get my mini-me setup with a better and safer solution ASAP, but I had to try out our new tool first to figure out how best to use it. Then I could teach him.
It was time to get serious with a Whiskey Barrel Stave.
When I first fired up this beast of a tool and stripped away every persistent piece of unwanted yuckiness in seconds, I almost jumped up and down and squealed with glee! I may have squealed. I do remember it was a blissful moment and I was caught up in the idea that our prepping time was about to get stripped down like the whiskey barrel stave I just cleansed. PLUS, there was practically no mess and definitely no choking dust because of the way Robert cleverly designed the dust collecting port. When connected to a shop vac a restorer turns into an animal of scrubbing vacuum cleaner. Any dust it created gets instantly sucked away. It was so good I didn’t think it actually created any choking hazards until I disconnected the vacuum hose and attempted to clean another disgusting stave without a vac. I quickly realized the power of this genius inventor’s design and stopped mid-cleaning to reconnect the lung saving sucking hose. After cleaning whiskey barrel staves in mere minutes, I couldn’t wait to show and teach my son.
Needless to say, my son was STOKED and relieved to use this inspired piece of hardware. He was able shred through the endless stacks of barrel bones in one tenth the time and both our hands and wrists were no longer beaten down after “cleaning day”. In fact, “cleaning day” was officially demoted to “cleaning time”, a minor task.
Final thoughts on cleaning a whiskey barrel stave.
Since that first intoxicating cleaning spree, I’ve purchased another more powerful version of Robert’s divine invention, and we keep both Restorers setup with different rollers and always on hand so we can tag team cleaning all parts of our barrels. This is my full-time gig now and the best thing about these amazing devices is that we can spend more time doing the fun stuff. You know, building orders, creating new products, and spending time together as a family after a satisfying day’s work. I’m never going to miss those long days of dust, debris, soreness, and frustration. The days before we had our Restorers.
To this day when a new woodworker approaches me about working with barrels, I always emphasize the importance of investing in a restorer before any other flashy tool. These Restorers really are game changing advancements in DIY and professional technology.
Written by Garrett Flynn Owner of O’Floinn Decor