Making Wooden Beer Steins

I recently decided to make some wooden beer steins. Because I filmed all three simultaneously, there might seem to be a few continuity errors, but really you're just seeing three different mugs being made. I milled all the stock that the sides of the tankards were going to be made out of down to a half inch thickness. For each tankard, I cut 12 pieces total that were about nine inches long and an inch and a quarter wide. To make the cylinder, I set my table saw blade at 75 degrees. This will make a cross section for each piece roughly like this. Next, I cut a 75 degree bevel on one side of each of the 12 pieces. I made this jig to cut the second bevel on each piece. It holds each piece at a slight angle, so I don't end up with parallel bevels. This is needed to make the conical shape. The jig securely holds each piece set away so it sits 89.5 degrees relative to the short end of the stick. I find that this angle over nine inches makes for a nice sloping shape to the side of the tankard. It's just important to make sure that the already beveled side is facing the fence. After making these cuts, I end up with a shape like this. One side's at 90 degrees, the other at 89.5. If I were to glue these together like this, I'm going to end up with a slight spiral, and I don't really want that. The offset that results wouldn't be the hardest thing in the world to correct, but there's another way. By taking off one and a half degrees from the bottom, I can end up with a cone shape that'll be much more even. When I glue all this together, I make sure it's the bottoms that are what's lined up to each other. Even with the correction that I made earlier, a small bit of sanding is needed to get the top and bottom each flat. To smooth out the inside of each tankard, I use a drum sander that I made from my lathe. It's just a piece of wood wrapped with an old 80 grit sanding belt. I made these fixtures to hold the tankard while I round off the outside. I shimmed them out with duct tape to get a snug and very close to center axis hold on the tankard. And then it's just rounding off the outside on the lathe. To clean up the mouth of the tankard so you could actually drink out of it, I need to use a steady rest. If you want to see how the rest was made, click the link in the upper right hand corner. The next step is to cut out some bottoms. I just use something that's a quarter to three eighths of an inch thick. The bottom just gets glued on with a slight overlap. Once the glue is dry, I use a flush cut bit on the router and a sander to clean up the joint. The handles are pretty straightforward. I cut out a shape that I think looks nice and seems to fit a hand well. I use stock that's an inch, maybe an inch and an eighth thick. After that, it's a lot of shaping, sanding, and cutting the slot for the lid hinge. Once I'm happy with the handle, I glue it onto the tankard. At this point, I could have stopped with some pretty cool looking giant beer mugs, but I wanted to add lids. I cut up a lot of isosceles triangles at varying sizes to make segmented layers. Each layer had six triangles to make sort of a hexagon shape. Each layer was then glued up individually. I smoothed out the sides on the smallest layer using the belt sander. For the bigger ones, I used a drum sander. I drilled some tiny holes through the center of each layer to help line them up during the next glue up. I also bored in a big mortise so I could attach this to my four jaw chuck on the lathe. I used a finish nail through each of the holes I drilled earlier, so when I lined up the layers, the centers were all the exact same spot. Strictly speaking, lining the layers up this way really wasn't necessary. It was just something I thought I'd try, and the nail was removed before it went onto the lathe. I knocked off the corners on the biggest ring just to make the turning a little easier. My initial rough turning was done just so I could turn the lid around in the chuck and be able to hold it on from the other side. I did this first so I could fit the tankard to the lid itself. I'm 100% self-taught at turning, so if any of my tool usage or techniques raises an eyebrow, don't assume that I actually know what I'm doing. I didn't actually show this part, but that little hole that was left from the nail that I used to line up the layers was eventually filled with a dowel. For the third lid, I wanted to make something a little more simple and flat. I cut the slots for the lid handles on the router table. I used the old super glue and masking tape trick to hold the lids down securely. I used the seam between the segments on the bottom layer of the lid to line up the slot perfectly. Much like the tankard handles, the lid handles were just all about cutting out a pleasing profile and then sanding and shaping it. Once the lid was complete, I was able to line up and drill out the hinge pinhole. I used some Chicago screw halves to make up my hinge pin. I started by finishing everything inside and out with three coats of armor seal. To make these mugs fully waterproof, I lined the insides and the rims with food safe epoxy. The seal coat always goes on a little rough, so after that cured, I sanded it smooth and applied a second coat. For the walnut mug, I made up this brass retired air command medallion. If you want to see how to acid etch brass, click the video link in the upper right. For the flat top oak mug, I cut up some Pacific Northwest graphics out of vinyl. The third stein, which was kind of my test one, I kept blank. Overall, I'm really happy with how these came out. I wouldn't say they're really practical to actually drink out of, at least on any kind of regular basis, but they look great. And as always, if you made it this far, thanks for watching.