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Thread: A bent-stave cask

  1. #1
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    A bent-stave cask

    Here's some pictures of a coopered cask I just finished with some build pictures. It's the general size and shape of a butter churn (although almost all churns I've seen have straight staves) but since I am not planning to actually churn any butter we'll probably use it as an umbrella stand or something like that.

    The first few staves:

    churn staves.jpg

    My makeshift shave horse (I've seen ones like this described as a "shave pony") and my regular jointer flipped upside down in the vice. The shave horse actually worked surprisingly well. The jointer worked ok, but a bigger one on the floor would be really nice. My next project is to learn how to make planes so I can build a real cooper's jointer...

    shave horse and jointer.jpg

    After dressing the staves and raising it up, but before bending

    before bending.jpg

    To bend I decided to boil / steam it rather than the more traditional method of putting it over a small fire. Since I had never done this before I thought that would maximize my chances of success and minimize the risk of destroying it.

    steaming.jpg

    After about 30 minutes in the pot, I pulled it out and started driving the hoops down. I wore safety glasses because I was really afraid the staves were going to break violently...

    driving first hoop.jpg
    Last edited by Christian Thompson; 04-20-2015 at 4:19 PM.

  2. #2
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    After bending, I cranked a rope tight around the top to get the top hoop on. After tying the rope on I stuck a stick in there and wound it up. There are better ways to do this... It wouldn't have worked if the staves were any thicker.

    rope.jpg

    After getting the top hoop on:

    done.jpg

    After that I leveled the staves on one end with a plane and cut the groove for the head using this croze I made. The croze worked ok, but the teeth were pretty grabby. Not sure if they are too big, not sharp enough, or just not shaped right. Part of the problem was I couldn't figure out how to secure the cask while cutting the croze. Eventually I watched a youtube video of Alex Stewart making a churn (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTb2zVpQGg4). He sets the churn on its side and leans on it while using the croze with one hand. That worked a lot better than my original method of holding the churn between my knees using using two hands on the croze so maybe the teeth are fine as is.

    croze.jpg croze teeth.jpg

    Putting in the head went pretty smoothly and I didn't get any pictures of it. I didn't have a wide piece of cedar so I used some pine. In barrels the heads are built up with multiple narrow pieces. I decided to go for a single piece, though, just so I had one less place to leak...

    Here is the finished product. It drips for a few minutes, but then swells up tight enough to hold water:

    standing.jpg side.jpg
    Last edited by Christian Thompson; 04-20-2015 at 4:38 PM.

  3. #3
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    Hi Christian. Good going. You might like these videos of how it was done in the Guinness brewery back in the 50s in Dublin - they didn't mess about, or worry too much about the risk of losing a finger or two. Don't mind the diddly music...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bNp3E-SuQw

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60hO95J2Xgo
    Last edited by ian maybury; 04-21-2015 at 5:00 AM. Reason: fixed link

  4. #4
    Those Guiness videos are amazing.

  5. #5
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    Excellent work. This takes a lot of different skills that you seem to have mastered. If you ever make that cooper's shave bench please post a build.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by ian maybury View Post
    Hi Christian. Good going. You might like these videos of how it was done in the Guinness brewery back in the 50s in Dublin - they didn't mess about, or worry too much about the risk of losing a finger or two. Don't mind the diddly music...
    Thanks Ian - great videos. I've seen the first one, but hadn't seen the second. The first one was one of the ones I used to try to figure out how to plane the stave edges and end up with a curve. Working with those side axes is another thing on my list of things to learn. Hopefully without losing any digits :-).

    Quote Originally Posted by Malcolm Schweizer View Post
    Excellent work. This takes a lot of different skills that you seem to have mastered. If you ever make that cooper's shave bench please post a build.
    Thanks for the kind words Malcolm. I definitely wouldn't say I have mastered the skills, though - more like muddled through :-). But I was really happy that the curved staves came together as tight as they did. I tried to keep my expectations low that this one would hold water so that was a bonus. I think with oak it gets harder (no pun intended) because the wood doesn't compress as much to make up for slight imperfections. Hopefully with some practice I'll get accurate enough to try with oak.

    I'll definitely post some pictures of the jointer build. My plan is to start with a few small planes to get a feel for it before attempting with a large, expensive piece of wood. We'll see how the schedule goes this summer, though. Historically my shop time goes down as the weather warms up...

  7. #7
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    Our 2 initial coopers in Williamsburg came from the Whitbread(S?) brewery in England. They worked in a little wooden shack with NO windows and only candle light.(WHY work with no windows?)

    It was traditional at brewerys to let the coopers have all they wanted to drink,otherwise they'd just steal it!

    That old song:"Roll out the barrel"-that referred to the practice of putting hot water in an empty whisky barrel and rolling it around. This extracted some of the soaked in whiskey. BUT,that whiskey was now WOOD alcohol!! Very bad to drink. There is so much alcoholism in the genes of the English(Not a smear,Google it. I'm of English extraction myself. Missed the alcoholic gene!!),many would resort to means like this to get a drink.

    I don't understand the current TV commercial about the "Devil's Cut" a company is advertising.( Well,actually I DO,just am aggravated by this kind of garbage!) That (Devil's cut) is whiskey extracted from the wooden cask. THey admit it. Again wood alcohol. I think the whole thing is a scam,as such alcohol would be illegal to sell. Maybe they just put a teeny bit of extracted whiskey into their regular whiskey,and use it as an advertising gimmick. The public is easy to fool if they don't know the facts behind nonsense like this. The "Rolled steel" of those well advertised pickup trucks comes to mind. "Just like the rolled steel submarines are made from!!!!!" Yeah,tin cans and little red wagons are made from rolled steel!! What other kind of steel COULD they use? Billet??? Cast??? Ridiculous the gimmicks that are foisted upon the public. I swear,so much garbage is presented to the public,I fear that some day NOBODY will know ANYTHING any more.

    Reminds me of the scene on "Mad Men",where Don Draper is telling the Lucky Strike people,their tobacco is "toasted". The Lucky Strike guys reply "But, every one toasts their tobacco". Draper replies "No, YOURS is toasted. Everyone else's is POISON". I remember those "It's toasted" ads back in the day. Do they still run those?

    Back to the coopers:They had to make 2 casks a day to support themselves,and totally by hand.

    When they moved to a new location,Jon and I practically equipped their new shop with large tool boxes,cooper's jointers,and numerous hand tools. I even made the bits for their braces. Short spoon type bits for drilling the holes between segmented lids to peg them together. They put a reed between each segment to stop them from leaking. Sort of a gasket.

    I felt sorry for them,having to use plane blades made from fairly low carbon steel to cut white oak all day long. Sharpening was terrible using those miserable sandstone wheels the shops used. I secretly made them a few irons out of A2,which helped them a LOT! You couldn't tell them from the regular irons since they were hand forged.

    Back to advertising,this reminds me of the Australian guy who came back home during the war with an "LMF". Everyone thought he was a hero. Lots of parties to honor him. Finally,it came to light that he had been discharged for "Lack of Moral Fiber!" The parties abruptly stopped. Another example of the public being fooled!!
    Last edited by george wilson; 04-21-2015 at 12:11 PM.

  8. #8
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    Interesting George. I can't imagine those guys cranking out two casks a day. I read an article about Alastair Simms a master cooper in England who seems to have about the same rate (3.5 hours per cask - http://www.theguardian.com/money/200...ng-cask-making). I started with oak and it took me over 2 hours to make one stave. After that I switched to cedar!

  9. #9
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    That Lucky Strike adverts coincidentally was written about in a mag I read last week. Here it is from Google: http://machineagechronicle.com/2011/...got-‘em/ As solid a reminder as can be imagined not to to go around in thrall to the medical and other establishments like many do. Hard to figure because without exception the chances are that 95% of the population would tell you they don't buy the modern day equivalent of that stuff. Think in the end lots of us are highly reluctant to take responsibility for ourselves...

    The bit that's interesting in the video is that by whatever means those guys (coopers) seemed able to peel of huge amounts of wood very quickly. Sharpening must have taken up a lot of their time, but myabe they had apprectices to do it or something?

    Reading the Chris Schwarz and Joel Moskowitz book 'The Joiner & Cabinet Maker' just now: http://lostartpress.com/products/the...abinet-maker-1 It really brings to mind just how localised craft activity was back in the day. Plus people apprenticed and became a cooper, or a whatever for life - they don't seem to have moved around much. It seems quite likely that the methods (and skills) used in coopering very likely evolved almost in isolation to become possibly quite a bit different to those used in other areas of woodworking. A classic case of doing a very narrow range of tasks all your life - much as in Japan where you had box makers, bowl makers, sieve makers, comb makers, spoon makers etc etc as well as coopers.

    I guess they got to skill levels almost unthinkable for us….
    Last edited by ian maybury; 04-21-2015 at 2:28 PM.

  10. #10
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    In some countries,like Italy,you Had to go into the same profession that your father did. In England,it was more lenient,and a son could choose his profession(at least,unless his father pressed him into something. Deals were often made between fathers and the tradesman they wanted their sons to apprentice with.

    Wogdon,who became one of the premier gunsmiths in 18th. C. England,had a father who was a saddler.

    Things are still pretty tight in Italy: You cannot build a new house,unless an older house had been there before. At least remnants of a foundation,for example. It is how they control land. I don't know where they put everyone,though,because the population has to be increasing over the years.

  11. #11
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    That is a great job. I would think it was fun also, making the tools also. Are you going to start making full size wine and whiskey barrels?
    Jim

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by James Pallas View Post
    That is a great job. I would think it was fun also, making the tools also. Are you going to start making full size wine and whiskey barrels?
    Jim
    Thanks Jim. Yes - it was a fun project. I've taken one class on bucket making and am signed up for a barrel making class this fall, but I'm also having to figure stuff out based on books and snippets of video which I find interesting - feels sort of like archeology. I've been looking for an excuse to build some tools so am enjoying that aspect as well. There is stuff available from ebay, but so far I haven't seen a jointer that is in good enough shape to be a user. There are lots of crozes out there, but that was easy enough to build with scraps that it wasn't worth paying for something I'd probably have to put time into restoring anyway.

    My eventual goal is to build full size wine barrels. I've got a long way to go, though :-).

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