I just got a great deal on a wooden whiskey barrel to be used as a dunking barrel. The slats are in good shape, but I'm having trouble getting everything tight again. I cut out one end of the barrel and plan on plugging the bung hole. I've been spraying the barrel down with water and for three nights have put a lawn sprinkler inside the barrel and turned the water on full force - about 10 ays into the process. Indeed the slats are tightening, but are coming together very slowly (still have some 1/16" spacings). If I could fill the barrel with water, I think things would "come together," but with the spacings, I cannot do so. Any ideas? I'm thinking about filling the spaces with silicone (calking), filling the barrel, and just letting it sit - hoping things will swell, forcing the silicone out as the wood comes together.

Got a container larger than the tub? A pond maybe? Throw it in for a few days. Really dry barrels are like really dry boats wooden and don't tighten up right away.

You can caulk the seams with silicone from the inside or the outside. You can also drive cotton yarn into the seams instead, or prior to using silicone. Use a thick blunt putty knife to push the yarn in.

Phil

Put a heavy garbage bag over it lay it on its side ain put in as much water as it will hold and close the bag. Leave it for a couple days rolling it daily to put the water on new wood.

I would try a little dish soap in the water. It will reduce the surface tension of the water. It actually makes the water wetter. Jerry

Sorry, there's no fast way to get a barrel tight, you gotta soak it till it's tight. There are probably all kinds of tricks to make it go better other than dunk it in a pond, maybe lay old towels over the outside to hold water in contact.

You should be able to find a barrel maker online and ask the folks who really know. Several of the Whiskey distillers make their own barrels, Johnny Walker being one I think.

Frosty The Lucky.

Don't caulk it if you don't have to as Phil said get a tub or kiddy pool set it in it. Fill the pool and the barrel to the level of the tub it should swell up from the bottom up just keep filling the barrel if is not rotten it will seal up.

Know anyone with a pool?

Apply boiling water the heat helps to absorb the water you tube or google '' impossible nail in wood trick''

All wood swells when wet, then shrinks when dry, but only in circumference, never in length. Old timers knew that you had to keep the wooden bucket at the bottom of the well, or it would not hold water. Metal buckets got around that problem. The rope still rotted, though.

You have to keep the barrel full year round, or it drys out and gaps. You can get around that problem with a plastic pond liner made to fit barrels. Just don't drop large chunks of hot or sharp metal. Or get a tin washtub, if you are trying to be period for the last 150 years.

pelleted calf feed,dog feed,oat meal,corn mealthat is what we have used when making water troughs for livestock

Remember that a large slack tub was much more handy for the wrought iron and mild steel forging days. With modern A36 it's usually better to avoid quenching it and just let it normalize when done.

So instead of taking up smithy space with a large slack tub I just bring in a bucket of water for cooling tongs and tools---for demos I sometimes use old wooden icecream buckets.

Note too that if you ever get into knifemaking; hot high carbon steel has a devilish longing to destroy itself in slack tubs---I've seen blades flip out of tongs and travel a dozen feet threading their way between equipment to make their death dive---like moths to a flame!

I just keep an old metal 5 gal bucket in the shop. It is plenty of water for anything I would quench. Mostly it goes to moisten coal while it cokes out.