Custom work is our specialty, so we’re happy to work with you to acheive exactly the style of finish you want on your barrel carving, barrel head table top or barrel clock. However, our experience is that customers are most often looking for one of the two general finish styles described here which can be selected when ordering. If you have something else in mind, just let us know.
1) New/Traditional Finish Style
The goal here is to make the barrel head look like a brand new elegantly finished piece of fine furniture. The surface is finely sanded, stained, sealed and top-coated with many coats of lacquer (or spar varnish or exterior oil if for outdoor display). The result is a very rich, deep looking, unblemished finish that excels at showing off the natural beauty of the quarter-sawn oak.
For “sixteenth and tenth barrels”, where either 1 or 2 steel hoops are included, we take care to restore the hoops to a better than new appearance. We carefully remove any dents or other imperfections from them and spray on a “hammered silver” paint that makes the hoops look like brand new galvanized steel. We then re-install them with carefully aligned screws around their perimeter that will ensure the strength and durability of the piece. See the results below.
2) Distressed/Antiqued Finish Style
The goal here is to make the barrel head look like a very old antique  …a very well made one.  Unlike many suppliers of “vintage” pieces, we do not cut any corners by making the distressed/antiqued pieces with reduced quality.  We go through the very same steps of disassembly, glueing, planing, carving, painting and topcoating as we do for the New/Traditional look, but we add distressing and aging via dings, worm holes, scratches, and simulated (not real) cracks in the head staves. We then apply darker glazes to fill in and accentuate these imperfections and add a smokey patina as years of exposure in a cellar or bar would.
For “tenth and sixteenth barrel” hoops we go through the same process as for the New/Traditional look up to the finish step. Instead of shiny hammered silver, we spray on a flat black patina with a somewhat mottled irregular look, then lightly over-spray that with sporadic bursts of highly textured reddish-brown paint that gives a very authentic lightly rusted look. See the results below.