How to make a wooden lid for a cauldron in a smokehouse or tandoor without glue, nails or screws

To cover a large cauldron, cauldron, smokehouse or tandoor, you can make a wooden lid. However, given the specifics of its application, it is impossible to use wood glue, and it is also advisable to abandon metal fasteners. Let's look at how you can make a lid purely from wooden parts to make it strong and durable.

Materials:

• inch board;
  
• wooden dowels;
  
• timber 30x50 mm;

Cap making process

The inch board is cut into blanks and threaded.


Then the scraps are preliminarily folded together into a shield, and a circle corresponding to the size of the required cover is drawn on it.

To connect the lamellas into a shield, it is necessary to make markings for installing dowels.

Then the blanks are drilled and connected with 2-3 dowels.



Next, you need to strengthen the shield with bars, placing them on the dovetail joint. In this case, given the size of the lid, you will need 4 beams.



A tenon and groove for a dovetail can be made very quickly using a hand router with the appropriate attachments, but the joint can also be prepared with hand carpentry tools.


The slats must be installed tightly, since glue is not used in this case, so tolerances are kept to a minimum.


The lid handle will be installed between the two central bars. It is cut from a piece of inch board.


It can be connected to bars without nails or screws using a classic tongue-and-groove connection. To do this, a groove is made in the center of the edge of the bars. Spikes are prepared at the ends of the handle. When installing, a handle is inserted into the slats, after which they are hammered together into the shield.

After installing the bars and handle, the shield is cut in a circle. This can be done with a jigsaw. The best hand tool is a bow saw. After cutting, the cover is sanded with sandpaper. It is necessary to remove the chamfer around the circumference, as well as the visible transitions at the junction of the shield lamellas.


Thanks to the fact that the resulting lid is made from inch boards, it retains heat well, while it is moderately heavy. Since all its elements are spliced ​​with dowels and a dovetail joint, the lid will not bend when the wood is saturated with moisture. There are no metal fasteners in it, so rusty stains will not appear on the surface. To make the lid less dirty and wet, it is better to soak it in natural oil, you can even use sunflower oil if there is no more suitable one.

Watch the video