Homemade bottle stopper. Designs of homemade water seals for wine and mash. Separation by design features

The cap on a Chinese thermos broke.
Only old Chinese thermoses (I have 2 of them) keep tea and coffee hot all day when traveling and they don’t taste like anything other than tea and coffee. But the cork should only be made from cork oak. There are no equals in terms of thermal conductivity. Soft enough not to break the flask when it cools when the stopper is pulled in. Unfortunately, they dry out and die, crumble. We don’t grow cork oak, otherwise I would cut it myself. And only plates made from glued cork crumbs are on sale. And it is not known what is in the plate for rubbing skis with mastic. Or in polystyrene foam, which 90% of advisers advise to cut out of instead. You can, of course, glue and coat the cork with sealant (go find some food grade) or wrap it in foil (paper-based!). But why are there no factory-made stoppers and flasks for Chinese thermoses on sale? This happened in the USSR.

I found a person on the Internet who makes ANY custom-made stoppers from cork oak. And there was even a telephone. But Ukrainian. I was afraid to call.

A good option was suggested to me by LiveJournal user Penkin .

Here's his recipe:
Let's take it plastic bottle(milk ones with a wide neck are good), so that the neck approximately matches the diameter of the neck of the thermos. Next we take bottle caps and stuff it inside this neck - so that part sticks out in one direction (this sticking out part will be the stopper that will lock the thermos). In my case, it does not fit perfectly tightly, but it works.

Thanks to him. I think that by adjusting it can be achieved that the screw cap-cup, when fully screwed, will gently press the entire system to the neck. + Seal the cracks with food grade sealant and make something like a gasket between the neck and a piece of the bottle on the plastic collar from the sealant.

And I tried one more option: (see option Cork No. 5 below)

glued together 8 whole ones wine corks(it turned out that half of my stock - corks glued from cork oak chips - are poorly suited for such work, although I see such things in Penkin’s photo), having previously turned them on a round and flat rasp (all that remains is to cut and grind the perimeter to the size of the sample). I have a problem, I need to seal the gaps between the parts. It seems that food grade sealant is best for this. I found CEMLUX 9014, the best in terms of price and quality, but I don’t see it in retail.

I tried to find cork bark for sale, there are only pieces

or plates and tubes

They are all thin and wow expensive. Aha, this seems to be what we are looking for! for terrariums! here is a 1 kg plate for 353 rubles, however, you have to go beyond the Moscow Ring Road, but it seems like misinformation, in other places the same one costs from 1,000 (!!!) rubles apiece, from this you can already cut out circles of the required diameter, albeit of small thickness, then glue it together.

Along the way I found something interesting:

"Bark is harvested after the tree reaches 25 years of age. Using a special ax, the bark is chopped along and around the tree trunk, and then torn off with the pointed end of the tool. The material from the first collection is used very rarely and only for technical purposes. Only cork bark has full properties oak of the third harvest.

Natural cork plug harvested in the summer on days when there is no sultry wind. A new full-fledged layer of bark is formed only 8-9 years after harvesting. After collection, the bark is dried directly on the plantation for six months and only then sent for further processing."

That's why it's so difficult to buy spare plugs. I think this is the most expensive part of a Chinese thermos.

Crap! Or maybe it’s easier to order in China? By mail via the Internet?

Let's get down to business.

“If I decide to do something, I’ll definitely drink it.”
Vladimir Vysotsky

PLUG No. 1

I started by trying to revive an old, shriveled, but familiar cork.
I took an ancient medical plaster 2 cm wide. It caked so that it was soaked through with glue and became sticky on both sides of the tape, which makes it unsuitable for ordinary purposes, but it was just fine for me - double-sided eco-friendly Velcro. I wound about 5 layers of plaster on the cork and reached the desired diameter (the easily inserted cork hung in the neck approximately halfway up its height). I added one and a half turns of food foil on top, which stuck perfectly to the patch. At the same time, it 100% does not allow glue to leak out. I inserted it into the neck and twisted it a little - the plug went in deeper and the seal became perfect.
PS: You need to wind the patch so that the taper of the cork is maintained, then when plugging and twisting, a small annular tubercle of soft patch under the foil is formed between the edge of the neck and the metal top. Using this tubercle it is easy to remove the stopper from the thermos.
PS: There is room for further improvement following example No. 2 with a handle (see)

PLUG #2

In the second thermos, the cork was preserved much better, however, it also shrunk a little. In order for the neck to be plugged tightly enough, it must be pushed all the way to the aluminum cap. As a result, it is very difficult to open the thermos; when the contents cool, the stopper is pulled in completely and only the lid protrudes above the neck. It is not glued to the cork, but is simply slightly rolled and held in place due to the taper of the cork. You pull the cap - the thin metal unclenches - and the cap flies off the cork; you begin to pull it out further, with your fingers and nails - the cork begins to crumble and break.
This is how, in most cases, it becomes unusable, you have to cut off a layer of the cork in order to put the cap back on (it’s unreliable, you have to roll it up, wrinkle it), and the cork ends up dangling in the neck - and then a plaster and foil come into play.
I thought, why not, before the cork completely dries out, screw a handle to the top of the cork to remove the cork. The material is the same cork, only not a wine cork, but a champagne cork (its integrity is not damaged by the corkscrew). Even if it is not whole, but glued together from pieces. At first I made a short one, but, after reflection, I decided to increase its length so that when screwing on the top-cup, its bottom would press the entire system against the neck of the flask, but very gently, so as not to break the fragile glass. This ensures an almost complete seal when the thermos is inverted. In addition, for reliability, before assembly, I removed the metal lid, coated it inside with nail polish (I often use it as glue) and carefully rolled it again. To fasten the structure, I used a galvanized screw with a wide washer head, deepening it 5 mm into the handle. I filled the body of the screw and the recess in the handle with glue and closed it with the same glue with a decorative top made from a piece of the narrow end of a champagne cork.
PS: The height of the cup is different for different thermoses, so the calculation is done locally. Examination. We insert the system tightly into the neck. We slightly bend the top of the cup inward with our fingers and screw it on. If at the very end of screwing we see how the deflection of the top of the cup straightens outward, the result has been achieved. If this happens earlier, grind or cut off the top of the handle. Well, or you will have to not screw the cup to the end of the thread, which is worse.

PLUG #3

In embodying Penkin's idea, I improved it somewhat.

1. The photo shows that I cut off the thread completely, but not right down to the collar, but leaving a small piece of the neck without a thread. This allows you to rest against the neck of the thermos not with a rigidly oblique thread, but with the smooth plane of the collar, while at the same time slightly penetrating into it with the protrusion of the neck. You can, of course, also moisten the joint between the collar and the protrusion with sealant, but absolute tightness can lead to the fact that when the contents cool completely (especially if there is a lot of air in the flask and little liquid), the flask can break due to the resulting vacuum. After all, a rigid structure, unlike a soft cork, will not be able to be pulled in.
2. I insulated the top of the structure with sealant. Since it practically does not come into contact with the contents, I allowed myself to use the most common white Moment sealant, and not food grade, which is expensive and difficult to find. As a result, the contents should not cool down as quickly as without sealing.
3. I made the sealant convex, accurately calculating the height of the structure (in my case, it is without sealant - 35 mm + 1 cm protrusion of the sealant). The convexity of the sealant gently and elastically rests from the inside into the center of the lid-cup when screwing (soft metal allows 2-3 mm of play) and ensures reliable tightness when turning the thermos over.

PS: We check the accuracy of the assembly according to example No. 2 (see)

CORK #4

I was not satisfied with the QUALITY of cork No. 3, and I made changes.

1. Reduced the number of cork parts from 5 to 3, using ONLY champagne corks. This made it possible to push the parts into the neck with greater effort, and the protruding cork parts began to fit more tightly into the neck, ensuring greater heat retention. Yes, and it looks prettier. Although there was a slight ovalness of the plastic when squeezing the pieces in, this did not interfere with the tight contact of the structure with the flask. If No. 3 was loose in the neck, then No. 4, starting from the cork part, tightly but effortlessly touches the flask.


2. I poured the sealant inside the structure not only from above, but carefully between the pieces up to the very collar, so that the liquid from the thermos did not penetrate between the parts of the stopper, dangling in it with the threat of souring. At the same time, No. 4 became 2 times heavier than No. 3!
3. Tightened the structure with the convex part of the sealant cling film for the best presentation designs


After a day, the film can be removed and the sealant can be dried without it. The complete impression was that the film was never removed. But she’s not there!!! Beauty!!?

PS: The sealant is very smelly (smells like vinegar essence), so it is better to dry it on staircase at least for the first three days.

CORK No. 5, etc. – dead-end options

1. I spent a lot of time to carve and glue this ikebana with nail polish.


But due to the beauty of No. 3 and No. 4, further processing was considered inappropriate due to excessive labor intensity.
2. You could, of course, buy real cork and food grade sealant and build an almost copy of the original. But it’s expensive and takes a lot of time.
3. I’m also too lazy to search on the Chinese Internet. If you suddenly, in gratitude for my work, send the link you found to purchase on eBay the exact stopper you need for a thermos, I will be grateful and will place it in this epoch-making post, but I doubt whether I will bother ordering when I already have even 2 backup options : for one thermos No. 1 and for another No. 3.
4. Once upon a time I came across on the Internet an option for expanding the plug by drilling it in the center and hammering it into the hole of a cylinder of a slightly larger diameter. Before hammering, the cork must be steamed!!! If anyone tries and succeeds, the wind is in his sails.

As promised, this article will present two ideas on how an ordinary cork stopper, with the help of decor, can be turned into original decoration your bottle or decanter. Let's begin.

Cork stopper.

Decor with twine.

(Master Class)

We will need:

• Two cork stoppers
• Flat brush
• Leg-split
• PVA glue
• Water based varnish

The first thing you should think about is the ease of use of our stopper. Whether we like it or not, we need to make it bigger. Agree, there will be more fuss with a small plug. To do this, we connect two plugs together with a self-tapping screw:

Next, we make “tails” from the twine, fold the twine into loops of the length we need. We tie our bundle of “tails” with the end of the twine without cutting it off from the bobbin. We glue the small tip in the place with the “tails” with a glue gun or superglue to the top of our cork, without touching the long working thread.

We cover part of the cork with glue and begin to wrap our cork in a circle, leaving a small part of the cork uncovered so that we can insert it into the neck of the bottle.

How many rows of twine you will place on top of each other depends on the thickness of the neck of the bottle or decanter. It will look very nice and neat when the cork and neck of the bottle form one straight line. Something like this:

bottle decor as a gift for the “moonshiner”

IN this option three layers of twine. You can read how to make such a bottle

We cover our cork with PVA glue in two layers, allowing each layer to dry thoroughly. We fix everything with varnish, also in two layers.

This procedure is not necessary if there is no frequent direct impact on the object, for example with hands, water, etc.

Cork stopper. Decor "Corn"

To be honest, as usually happens, I spied the idea. Looking at photos on the Internet, I don’t remember the topic, I came across a photo of a huge bottle where an ear of corn was used instead of a cork, I really liked it, so I decided to bring this idea to life. You ask: “Wouldn’t it be easier to just buy regular corn and process it properly?” I’ll answer, maybe it’s easier, but an ear of corn has one big drawback, it’s fragility. This kind of plug will not last you very long. So, what do we need:

• Two cork stoppers
• Self-tapping screw long enough to connect the plugs together
• Flat brush
• A variety of corn used to make popcorn
• Glue gun or superglue
• PVA glue
• Water based varnish

• We connect the plugs together with a self-tapping screw
• Using a glue gun, glue the corn kernels to the cork

• Leave a small part of the cork free

corn plug

• Treat with PVA glue 2-3 layers
• Treat with varnish

This is how our cork will look on the bottle.

Well, now I just have to come up with an original bottle for this cork.

This is a case where the end already exists, but the beginning has not yet happened.

With that, if you please, I bow. That's all for today. Until next time. And the most important thing:

Plastic bottles are versatile containers that can be reused. To provide such functionality, it should be supplemented with a stopper that limits the flow of liquid.

Simple options

You can make a stopper for a bottle different ways. Let's consider the algorithm for obtaining a silicone plug:

1. Initially we purchase starch, silicone sealant. You will also need plastic cup, which should be sized to match the diameter of the hole in the bottle.
2. Initially, ¾ of a package of starch and silicone is mixed (the volume of a full glass). It is important to knead the “dough” thoroughly to give it a uniform consistency.
3. When the mixture is ready, a plug is formed from it. It is placed in a glass. To prevent the silicone from sticking, the container is also covered with starch. It is also important to make several holes in the bottom of the glass. This will allow excess air to escape.
4. After this, the cork should dry for about 4 hours. When it is ready, it is taken out of the glass and leveled with a knife. To get rid of the smell, the workpiece should initially be kept in hot water, and then in solution cold water and soda. Then you need to dry it thoroughly in the fresh air.

If you need a drain hole, then you can make one in the plug using a small drill. If desired, you can form a small spout that will be used for pouring water.

We use wood

Wood is unique material, which perfectly retains moisture. Therefore, plugs were previously made only from it. This process is quite simple and consists of several steps:

• Select timber with a thickness slightly larger than the diameter of the neck.
• Then a small cone is formed from it. The easiest way to do this is to lathe. But if it’s not there, you can grind it out and sharp knife. During manufacturing, it is important to constantly monitor its shape and fit it to the hole. The plug should fit perfectly into the gap, sealing it.
• For versatility, a small hole can also be made in the stopper to allow liquid to be poured.

If you don’t want to waste time, it’s better to purchase a special plastic design that can be matched to different neck diameters.

Cork, in the form in which it is known today, appeared in the 17th century, at the same time as the glass bottle. Before this, it was also used, but in isolated cases. Most often, containers were sealed using rags or pieces of wood, which led to damage to the contents and deterioration taste qualities. Unlike wood, cork does not swell much, and with proper processing, the taste and smell of the drink do not deteriorate.

General information

Bottle stoppers differ in shape and design. During the manufacturing process, special components are added that improve protective function and act as an exclusive sign of the quality of drinks.

The stopper is tightly inserted into the neck of the container and retains its properties long time and is a product of natural origin, like a good quality drink. Making corks takes a long time and is difficult. The bark of a cork oak tree is initially removed when the tree is approximately 30 years old. This material is not used in production, since wine bottle stoppers are made only after the 3rd removal. The second layer grows for about another 10 years. The production technology consists of several successive stages: six-month drying, careful selection, washing and treatment with a disinfectant solution.

Classification by material of manufacture

Bottle caps come in different varieties. It all depends on many factors, including the purpose and material of manufacture. The most common types of traffic jams:

• cortical;
• plastic;
• metal;
• rubber;
• from foil;
• synthetic;
• glass.

Cork stoppers for wine bottles (also found among some types of champagne). Plastic bottles with soft drinks are sealed with plastic stoppers, and containers with mineral water and closes with beer metal lids. Rubber products are used. Many medications are sealed with foil stoppers.

Synthetic corks based on polyethylene are distinguished by the fact that they do not allow moisture to pass through and are easily pulled out with a corkscrew. The quality of these products may vary, but silicone ones are considered the best in this category. The advantages of glass stoppers are ease of opening and closing, interesting appearance. Experts recommend using them for wine that is not designed for long-term storage.

Separation by design features

Bottle stoppers are also available in microgranular, screw and yoke types. Microgranulated has a uniform structure, high elasticity and resilience. The production technology is quite new: food glue and a waxy substance of organic origin (extracted from...) are added to cortical granules no larger than half a millimeter in size. The entire process takes place under high pressure.

The screw plug has a low cost, eliminates the risk of developing cork disease, but is not strong enough. Made from aluminum alloys and synthetic gaskets. Bottles with yoke plug often found in cosmetic stores and on olive oil counters. Good tightness and the possibility of repeated use make the yoke stopper stand out from the rest.

Manufacturing Features

The cork compresses well, and thanks to this property it can be inserted into the neck of the bottle, where it will press tightly against the walls of the vessel due to its elasticity. This is achieved by thoroughly impregnating the material and heating it with steam (boiling). If the cork dries out, it will become hard. In production, it is pushed through a tube into the neck.

In order to protect the material from the effects of liquids in the bottle, it is treated with paraffin at high temperatures Oh. The cork begins to harden when cooled, so it is kneaded in a special press to restore its elastic structure.

Production of wine stoppers

Bottle stoppers from natural materials- an ideal capping method that is aesthetically pleasing. The product is resistant to temperature, it is lightweight, and has good permeability. required quantity air, does not rot. Regular natural cork can last about 50 years.

Production begins from the moment the layer is cut from the tree. The bark is stored in special rooms for one year, after which it is processed under high temperatures. Then it is cut into plates and sent for sorting. Strips are made from the plates, followed by turning out cylindrical plugs. The standard length is from 2.5 to 7 cm. It is believed that the longer the length, the higher the price of the drink.

The next stage of processing is grinding the cylinders to ensure perfect smooth surface. After this, the product is bleached and impregnated using wax. The final step is to burn the brand name onto the cork or print it under pressure. Sulfur dioxide is often added to the bottle under the cork to preserve the drink.

Yoke plug

You can often find square bottles with a yoke plug, which are produced by many manufacturers for the purpose of long and proper storage various liquids. In most cases, containers are made of glass. As a rule, it is small in volume, which is ideal for home storage of salad dressings and olive oil. Liter bottles glass with a stopper of the type in question are used for bottling lemonades, liqueurs, liqueurs, etc. For beautiful containers in the “vintage” style, the neck of which is widened, a yoke stopper - great way keep milk fresh, for example.

Bugel plugs consist of a cap made of high-quality and safe plastic and a wire holder made of stainless steel coated with chrome. These reusable products help keep bottled drinks fresh for a long time.

Advantages of a yoke plug

Bugel products are widely used for sealing vessels, while ensuring high tightness and reliability of packaging. By using these bottle caps, you can be sure of ease of use and preservation of the properties of the drink. Repeated use allows for significant savings.

Bugel plugs - worthy alternative products of natural origin. This type is rarely used for wine, since, according to experts, wine bottle loses its centuries-old aesthetic appearance. However, environmental and cost-saving considerations may in the future displace classical ideas about bottle capping options.