by Chris Coonce-Ewing


I recently built my own kegorater which has plastic tap handles. Not bad, but just not the right look. Also this doesn't indicate to others what I've got on tap. I looked into buying some tap handles and that's just out of the question. My wife gave me one made from a pool cue and ball a couple of years ago, but I can't count on gifts to supply tap handles. When all else fails.... make your own!

The first step is gathering the parts. For this I use a staircase spindle, a 3/8" zinc nut, a 4" diameter wooden circle, 2 screws and a bit of epoxy. Here's a picture of the spindle and nut.

I held the spindle up to my tap stand and figured out the height that I was looking for. This is entirely your personal preference. Once I had that I marked and cut the spindle (keeping the end with the square post). I then drilled a 3/8" hole in the bottom of the spindle and enlarged an area around the drilled hole with my dremel tool to hold the nut.

You could just drill one 3/8" hole (to allow the handle shank to fit into the tap handle) and then drill a larger hole, but by using the dremel too I was able to create a roughly hexagonal hole that better fit the nut. I then screwed the nut down as far as it would go onto the tap faucet shank and marked it with a sharpie (as to what side is "front") and pencil marked the spindle. Here is a picture of the nut on the faucet shank.


After you've done this you'll need to mix up some epoxy and put your nut into the bottom of the spindle. This is one of those things were I've got to say "be careful" not only are the fumes a bit toxic but the last thing you want to do is have a tap handle permanently attached to your hand.



You can see from this picture that I've epoxied the nut in place (I used JBWeld).

I then cut a notch in the top of the "square" part of the spindle. This allows me to inset my wooden circle a bit. This is entirely up to you. I could have just screwed it in place and left it at that, but I think this gives a nicer look.



I then drilled some pilot holes and after applying glue on the spindle, attached the round plate with 1 1/4" zinc screws.

After all that, here is a picture of my tap handle. All it needs at this point is a couple of layers of polyurethane and a label. You could paint it if you want, or stain first. I opted for a polyurethane/stain combination (as it's what I had on hand). This goes on first. Once that's dried I will then print out a label on the computer and decopauge it onto the tap handle.

I can hear you now. "The Frugal Brewer is permanently attaching the labels?" Don't worry, I haven't lost my mind. The reason I permanently attach them is that my cost to make a tap handle is low enough that I can justify making unique handles. Over time I'll have my own little collection of handles and when I make "standards" (the beer you always want to have on hand) I'll just pull down the existing handle and use it.

Here is a picture of my tap handle, stained in Honey Pine looking nice mounted on the kegorater. All it needs is a label (I'm waiting on my artist for this)









Here are two handles I used this weekend. Both are stained andlabeled. One (a heather ale) has a globe of heather as the 'finial' of the handle.