‘Every hammer blow makes a difference’: handcrafting whisky stills in Scotland – photo essay

A visit to McMillan Coppersmiths in East Lothian, which makes copper pot stills and columns for the distilled spirits industry

The sharp, repetitive sound of hammers steadily beating copper into shape echoes around the fabrication hall on an industrial estate just outside Edinburgh. At McMillan Coppersmiths in Prestonpans, metal workers wield heavy wooden mallets, steel hammers and steel moulding tools called flatteners as they coax curved sheets of copper into new stills for Scotland’s malt whisky distillers.

They talk about planishing, where the welds that join the seams in the rose-gold metal are hammered flat, and of tafting, where the copper is formed by their hammers into the gentle curves of the still around hefty steel moulds.

Coppersmith Alphonso Martin shapes the head of the still

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