Our friends here in Houston recently purchased a couple of old whiskey barrels to use in their wedding as props. They found them listed on Craigslist – and they said the guy has a huge stash of them for great prices!
I had to see it for myself.
On Sunday afternoon, my friend Matt and I arranged to meet up with the guy at his storage place.
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| Jackpot! |
He had loads of both whiskey and tequila barrels – stacked up the ceiling!
The whiskey ones hold a smaller volume than tequila, so they were a little shorter and also had less bulge. The tequila barrels use galvanized steel bands and the whiskey barrels had rusty iron bands.
Along with barrels, he had piles upon piles of just the bands themselves.
I immediately thought of Joan’s sculptural whiskey barrel orb that she made a few years ago. (Her tutorial is found here for reference, and her finished product is pictured below.)
| Source |
He was selling the bands for nearly nothing so I loaded up with a few handfuls of them (12 rings to be exact) with plans to make some orbs!
(I had planned to make 4 orbs – each with 3 rings, but ended up making 3 orbs with 4 rings each.)
On the way home, we swung by Home Depot to get some nuts, bolts, and star lock washers to hold the rings together. At home, we used the drill press to make holes in the bands.
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| Matt punching a hole in a whiskey barrel band |
Once the holes were punched, I assembled the orbs.
After getting three rings per orb assembled, I added a fourth ring over top the sphere and thought it looked much better like that.
First one done, hanging out in my flower weed garden at our Houston home.
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| Another one done (with all whiskey bands) hanging on our Houston patio |
If you’re in the Houston area, go load up on some cheap whiskey barrel bands and make some pretty orbs for your patio or garden!
Miranda, I LOVE this!! Thank you for telling me, and you are most welcome! Dan loved it too- it was so fun to see you making them and I loved how you added the 4th ring.
Also I love your blog and your grandmother's, now yours, house. I'm going to come back tomorrow when I will have more time to go through your posts. It is great that you are chronicling your journey. I remember it was a lot of work to blog during the renovations, but you do forget , so you will love going back one day and seeing all your hard work. Y'all are doing an amazing job! So happy to find you:)
Thank you, Joan! Your lovely house is one of our greatest inspirations! 🙂