I made a bucket

[Christian Thompson]

I took a coopering class this weekend at the Somerset Historical Center in Somerset, PA. The class was a lot of fun and I am pretty happy with the result. My main goal was for it to actually hold water which it (mostly) does .

bucket.jpg bucket top.jpg bucket full.jpg

Anybody else done any coopering?

[Andrew Fleck]

Looks good. That looks a lot like my ice cream freezer bucket. How did you attach the bottom?

[Christian Thompson]

It sits in a dado (called a croze). It's kind of tricky getting it in there - you take the bottom hoop off, loosen the top hoop, and then splay the staves enough that you can squeeze the bottom in. Then the hoops go back on and get pounded tight.

[george wilson]

Is that cypress or juniper? If the steel bands are tight enough,that very soft wood will swell up and fit together tight enough to hold water (if the bottom is well fitted).

[Christian Thompson]

Supposedly it is white pine. The water level hasn't changed much overnight but the bottom chime is still pretty wet. I'm hoping it swells enough to be completely dry, but for a first attempt I'm pretty happy with holding water overnight...

EDIT: Actually now that I think about it, the bottom came from one of those Lowe's "whitewood" boards so I'm not sure what it is. The class organizers milled the stave blanks from a white pine log.

[Judson Green]

Cool bucket, looks like a fun project! Do you have any "in the shop/build photos"?

Some years ago I made two coppered doors for a kitchen island I built.

island doors1.jpg island doors2.jpg island doors3.jpg island doors5.jpg island doors6.jpg island doors7.jpg

[george wilson]

They use cypress and juniper for buckets at the cooper's shop in Williamsburg. Those woods are not very subject to rotting when wet. They are quite soft,and easily compress together when wet to make them water tight.

I guess the big objective in wet coopering is to make barrels of white oak that will hold beer under pressure. And,not much help from the wood swelling!!

[Christian Thompson]

Cool bucket, looks like a fun project! Do you have any "in the shop/build photos"?

Some years ago I made two coppered doors for a kitchen island I built.

It was definitely a fun project - although it is the first time I have spent more than a few hours in a row woodworking. I was feeling it yesterday! Unfortunately no build photos...

That kitchen island looks great! Doing something like those doors may be one of the few practical application of the stuff I learned :-).

They use cypress and juniper for buckets at the cooper's shop in Williamsburg. Those woods are not very subject to rotting when wet. They are quite soft,and easily compress together when wet to make them water tight.

I guess the big objective in wet coopering is to make barrels of white oak that will hold beer under pressure. And,not much help from the wood swelling!!

The area where I took the class has a big maple syrup tradition and traditionally used wooden buckets to collect the sugar water. Supposedly they used white pine for most of the buckets. I guess for maple syrup the bucket only stays wet for a few weeks a year so maybe the rot resistance wasn't as big an issue?

Making a barrel would definitely be the holy grail for me coopering-wise. My wife and I are working on starting a small winery which is why I got interested in coopering in the first place. Whiskey and wine are pretty much the only common modern uses for it. Using barrels for beer brewing seems to be making a comeback as well with some of the new craft breweries.

The instructor for the class spent a week down at Williamsburg a while ago working with the cooper. He made a small cask that week and supposedly it is quite a bit harder than making a bucket .

[John Crawford]

Not quite on topic, but.... I enjoy this very short (11 min) documentary about Alex Stewart, a cooper from TN. You toolmakers might like it too, as he makes most of his own tools:

http://www.folkstreams.net/film,224

[Christian Thompson]

I like that video as well. That's pretty much the basic process that they had us use in the class (although with somewhat less pleasing results :-).

Here's another interesting one that shows a bit about preparing staves for a barrel: http://vimeo.com/64259224.

[Pat Barry]

One key to the ability of a wooden bucket (or barrel) to hold a liquid is that the wood stays wet. Once it dries out, leaks will re-develop. Of course, once the bucket gets filled the leaks will probably heal themselves again. Not sure how long that cycle can continue though - probably depends on the material.

[Ryan Mooney]

Nifty bucket, that definitely came out nice.

I guess the big objective in wet coopering is to make barrels of white oak that will hold beer under pressure. And,not much help from the wood swelling!!

Beer in barrels is generally not under a huge amount of pressure; if i recall correctly generally 1 atmospheres (14 psi) to maybe 2 atmospheres (30psi) although yes getting it to not leak is a trick
Some references to beer barrel construction here: http://www.craftbrewing.org.uk/index...skconditioning
Historically it wasn't entirely uncommon to line the barrels with pitch or tar (although it definitely wasn't considered a good practice and period documents mention checking against that).

I know some of the coopering techniques used rushes between the staves, for instance when we toured the Rodenbach brewery they have 2,500 to 18,000 gallon oak tanks and a cooperage on site to service them (interestingly the tanks are tapered so the bottom is the wide part and the top is narrower to allow placing the huge bands from the top). We saw some of the tanks dissasembled and partially re-built with the rushes in place between the staves. I've found some similar references in historical brewing texts to similar techniques for barrel construction. For the larger tanks the staves are pegged (doweled if you will) every ~4' or so, I don't know of any smaller barrely where anyone did that though.

Also note that preferably the oak is split not cut to minimize the end grain contact (both from a leakage but perhaps more importantly for minimizing flavor transfer, the best bourbon barrels are still split but its common for most others to be cut nowdays).

[Christian Thompson]

One key to the ability of a wooden bucket (or barrel) to hold a liquid is that the wood stays wet. Once it dries out, leaks will re-develop. Of course, once the bucket gets filled the leaks will probably heal themselves again. Not sure how long that cycle can continue though - probably depends on the material.

Yes! They warned us if we leave the bucket laying around dry one day we'll find a pile of staves and hoops. It will apparently shrink enough that gravity will pull down the hoops and the whole thing will come apart.

In the wineries I have worked at we have spent a decent amount of time soaking old barrels to try to get them to seal up again. Some do and some don't so it's best to keep them wet. Barrels are really expensive!

[Christian Thompson]

Nifty bucket, that definitely came out nice.

Beer in barrels is generally not under a huge amount of pressure; if i recall correctly generally 1 atmospheres (14 psi) to maybe 2 atmospheres (30psi) although yes getting it to not leak is a trick
Some references to beer barrel construction here: http://www.craftbrewing.org.uk/index...skconditioning
Historically it wasn't entirely uncommon to line the barrels with pitch or tar (although it definitely wasn't considered a good practice and period documents mention checking against that).

I know some of the coopering techniques used rushes between the staves, for instance when we toured the Rodenbach brewery they have 2,500 to 18,000 gallon oak tanks and a cooperage on site to service them (interestingly the tanks are tapered so the bottom is the wide part and the top is narrower to allow placing the huge bands from the top). We saw some of the tanks dissasembled and partially re-built with the rushes in place between the staves. I've found some similar references in historical brewing texts to similar techniques for barrel construction. For the larger tanks the staves are pegged (doweled if you will) every ~4' or so, I don't know of any smaller barrely where anyone did that though.

Also note that preferably the oak is split not cut to minimize the end grain contact (both from a leakage but perhaps more importantly for minimizing flavor transfer, the best bourbon barrels are still split but its common for most others to be cut nowdays).

Wow - 18,000 gallons. There are some old wineries around here that have similarly sized tanks made out of redwood. One of the museums has a room that when you look around you realize is inside one of those tanks. It amazes me that they were able to hold liquid and keep that many joints leak free. Although there is a story in a coopering book I read ("A Cooper and his Trade" - a good read for those interested in this stuff) about a beer tank rupturing resulting in a drunken party and several fatalities...

I've seen mention of using rushes as well. I think their main function was to swell and seal up the joints.

[Ryan Mooney]

Wow - 18,000 gallons. There are some old wineries around here that have similarly sized tanks made out of redwood. One of the museums has a room that when you look around you realize is inside one of those tanks. It amazes me that they were able to hold liquid and keep that many joints leak free. Although there is a story in a coopering book I read ("A Cooper and his Trade" - a good read for those interested in this stuff) about a beer tank rupturing resulting in a drunken party and several fatalities...

I've seen mention of using rushes as well. I think their main function was to swell and seal up the joints.

yeah the pressure at the bottom of those tanks has to be immense. Walking through packed rows of them was sort of awe inspiring.

http://www.brewery.org/brewery/library/Rodnbch.html - has some very minimal discussion of the maintenance (and ongoing work to stop leaks ). Unfortunately the coopering room was closed off when we did the tour but it was quite large from what I could see sneaking a peak through the door.

The rushes were definitely intended to help seal the joints. They apparently also use cotton in some cases (and likely other things as well).

Here is one of the barrel rooms at Rodenbach (there were multiple not sure how many and most had 4 or more rows like this).

IMG_0921.JPG

Me next to one of the barrels for scale - I'm 6'2"
IMG_0912.JPG

And the best picture I managed to take of one of the barrels open for re-coopering, unfortunately the lighting was really bad.
IMG_0923.JPG