Traditional coopering

[BuckeyeDennis]

Last weekend, my wife and I toured a tiny local winery. At one point during the tour, the owner/winemaker was explaining about “oaking” wines. It seems that a new French-oak cask now costs about a thousand dollars, which is cost-prohibitive for all but very fine wines. But the tannins in the oak do good things to wine. So this winemaker uses plastic and stainless-steel tanks for the aging process, and basically just tosses spiral-cut French oak dowels into the tanks. Those spiral-cut dowels aren’t cheap either, but they’re not nearly as expensive as a traditional cask.

All this got me wondering just how much labor goes into making a traditional staved barrel. Not to mention how the heck coopers can cut curved barrel staves so precisely that the barrels are watertight, using no adhesives, and no fasteners other than the steel banding. Especially in the old days, when it was all done by hand. So I watched a few YouTube videos, and I must say that I was astonished at the process.

Check out the video below. I’m going to reflect on it the next time I think I need a new machine, fixture, or instrument in order to produce accurate parts.

[youtube]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1bNp3E-SuQw[/youtube]

[Hobbyman2]

lol a little too much labor for me now !

[robinson46176]

Here is a link to a favorite movie of mine since it first came out about 1982. I first saw it on PBS. It's called "Ben's Mill". I may have posted it in the past, I don't remember. I'm posting this link now because in it he makes a round wooden livestock tank in cooper fashion. I found this link on a forestry forum. The second link is to the discussion of the video on the forestry forum if you want to see that first.
One note: The fellow posting indicates that the video is the full length but at the folkstream site they refer to it as an excerpt. I didn't have time to watch it this morning but the player progress bar indicates that it is a full hour. The forestry guys mention the tank so I assume that at least that much is there.

http://www.folkstreams.net/film,187

http://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=93195.0


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[jsburger]

Both of the above videos were very fun to watch. So many people have no idea what it was like when many of us here were growing up or the way it still is today in some parts of the country.

In Farmers video, Ben's mill is in Barnet, VT. My sister lives in Danville, VT which from looking at the map is about 10 miles away.

[WileyCoyote]

I never knew there were beers aged in barrels. Must be one of the reasons Guinness tastes so good.

[jsburger]

I never knew there were beers aged in barrels. Must be one of the reasons Guinness tastes so good.

Guinness is the BEST malt beverage made in the world IMO. The best is the drought and most people don't know it is very low in alcohol, about 3 to 3.5%. The bottled Extra Stout is higher in alcohol and that varies depending where in the world you are.

[sehast]

That is quite a video. Never saw a whole shop, bandsaw, jointer, planer, table saw, horizontal boring machine all powered by water.

[algale]

Wow. Check out the table saw at 1:19! Set up with a sliding cross-cut table and a splitter/riving knife and blade guard of sorts. This was in 1953?

[BuckeyeDennis]

Here is a link to a favorite movie of mine since it first came out about 1982. I first saw it on PBS. It's called "Ben's Mill". I may have posted it in the past, I don't remember. I'm posting this link now because in it he makes a round wooden livestock tank in cooper fashion. I found this link on a forestry forum. The second link is to the discussion of the video on the forestry forum if you want to see that first.
One note: The fellow posting indicates that the video is the full length but at the folkstream site they refer to it as an excerpt. I didn't have time to watch it this morning but the player progress bar indicates that it is a full hour. The forestry guys mention the tank so I assume that at least that much is there.

http://www.folkstreams.net/film,187

http://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=93195.0


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Thanks for that video, farmer. I just finished watching it, and it was fascinating to watch that old machinery in operation. Not to mention Ben’s amazingly diverse skills.

[robinson46176]

I just watched the video "again" I have seen it a bunch of times over the years. To a person of broad interest and skills (or at times a lack of skills ) that story is almost magic.
I have a blacksmith shop as part of my farm shop. I also have a threading machine like he used to thread the rods for the tank. Mine was powered through an old junky truck transmission when I got it but I cut that cobbled up mess away and I just use a hand-wheel and a crank. I have several hydraulic bending presses for both flat stock and pipe. Welding equipment including arc, wire-feed and multiple torch sets (I used to cut a lot of scrap using oxygen and propane) . I also have a reasonable sized metal lathe, chop-saw and good batch of grinding equipment. We are sat up to do engine rebuilding and about anything we really want to.
Our son, Scott and I have worked together on stuff since he was quite young and still do. Last year we went together to acquire a smallish limb chipper. We need to "go through" the engine but the chipper is quite good. It will chip up to 5 inch limbs but I save anything 2" up for firewood. The chipper will let me clean up the crappy slab-wood from the sawmill as mulch.
There is always something going on here.

Here is a pic of a 140 HP V-8 tractor son Scott bought a few weeks ago to pull his 15' bat-wing mower. He is working on it now to get it all prepared for spring mowing. Always something...

Tractor - Scotts MF-1155-D.jpg (80.76 KiB) Viewed 18703 times

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