Cooperage: Gizmos And Gadgets Needed To Create The Perfect Barrel

The Anatomy of The Wine Barrel

Growers and winemakers are in the midst of harvesting grapes. The harvest is expected to be completed by the Thanksgiving holiday. One of the vessels winemakers will be using is the barrel. I have written two articles on these crucial vessels. In those articles the focus was on three items:

the anatomy of a barrel was established,
vocabulary was defined relating to the occupation of being a cooper, and
various tools were introduced which a cooper would need to begin to create these wonderful vessels.

The articles can be found at these links:

https://winehistoryproject.org/croze-howel-or-chiv/ May 2020
https://winehistoryproject.org/chamfers-knives-and-shaves/ June 2020

Creating Wine Barrels With Coopering Tools In The Wine History Project Collection

The Wine History Project collection contains many important tools which are crucial to the entire process of creating a barrel. In fact, the 40 coopering tools in the collection range in the fabrication date from 1825 through 1910. While many of the tools are duplicates (we may have two or three), I wanted to see if we had all the gizmos and gadgets needed to create the “perfect” barrel.

Recently, my research has revealed the order in which the cooperage tools are used to create a barrel. I thought this was of interest and to share it with you. So, my question to myself was, do the Wine History Project’s cooper’s tools “line up” with the tools in the list I discovered?

1776 – The Art of Making Barrels – Cooper’s Tools Used In America

It is believed that the art of making barrels dates back to the 3rd millennium BC. Documentation is found on the walls of Egyptian tombs. The wall-painting in the tomb of Hesy-Ra, shows a wooden tub made of staves, bound together with wooden hoops. It was used to measure wheat. This barrel may have been made from the trunk of a palm tree.

Another painting found in an Egyptian tomb dating to 1900 BC shows a cooper at work and tubs made of staves in use at the grape harvest.

In 350 BC, Celts, a Northern European tribe who lived in areas of the Alps currently known as Germany and France, used barrel-shaped, watertight wooden containers which could be rolled or stacked.

For about 2,000 years, barrels were the most convenient type of storage and shipping containers. All types of bulk goods, from gold coins to nails, were stored in these containers

Ancient wine was fermented, aged, stored and transported in clay vessels 8,000 years ago. Eventually the fragile clay vessels were replaced by wood barrels. Evidence suggests that Romans first used barrels in the third century AD. Barrels were also used for long-term storage of water on ships.

The Evolution of the Barrel in America

According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website (https://www.cbp.gov) wooden barrels of various sizes, such as tuns, hogsheads, kegs, and firkins were used for transporting liquids from the early days of our nation to the 1950’s. New materials and technologies replaced barrels with a variety of containers. Though commodities such as olives and pickles are now primarily stored in glass jars, wood barrels are still used in the production, storage and shipment of alcohol-based beverages like wine, whiskey, bourbon and sake”.

Hogsheads

In 1776, at the time the United States declared its independence, Cooper’s tools were advertised for sale in the Virginia Gazette. Many plantations had supplemental cooperages using slave labor to construct the many needed “hogsheads.” This term, originally derived from a 15th-century English phrase “hogges hede,” referred to a unit of measure. Some say that European “oxhead” barrels which were branded with an ox head, were the source of the term.

Hogshead barrels were used to store and transport tobacco from this colonial period through the early 1900s. Remember that tobacco was the money crop in colonial times, and when these hogsheads were filled with tobacco leaves, they weighed about one thousand pounds. Hogsheads were 20-25% larger than a standard barrel. Early American barrels were made of red or white oak staves and oak hoops.

A good thing to remember is hogshead barrels were also used for holding liquor, beer, flour, sugar, molasses, and other products. They held approximately 225 – 250 liters, or 54-130 gallons, of liquid. Building hogsheads, which usually measured 48 inches in length and 30 inches across the head, was hard work.

Found at: The Great South by Edward King

The inventory of many of these estates had cooper’s implements which included: compasses, froes, drawing knives, bung borers, hollowing knives, jointers, heading knives, cooper adzes, and cooper axes. Generally, the cooper’s tools seem to be heavier than tools of other trades as I sort through the metal axes, drivers, and hammers which are weighty and short-handled.

Barrels are Essential Winemaking Containers.

Cooperage became an integral part of winemaking. Wooden barrels typically hold 50 to 60 gallons of wine; in the earlier days large casks held as many as 1,000 gallons. Barrels and casks are constructed with wooden staves, narrow lengths of shaped wood with slightly beveled edges. The handmade staves form the sides of containers such as barrels, tanks, tubs, and vats. Each barrel was handmade of wood by a trained craftsman known as a cooper. They form the body of the barrel. The wooden staves allow a small amount of air to slowly enter the wine, which was believed by some to impart a desirable aroma and flavor to the wine as it ages.

I discovered that there were no patterns or written measurements for constructing a barrel. Each barrel is unique based on the staves cut and grooved prior to fitting them together.

Before Prohibition, American oak or redwood barrels were typically used for aging wines made in California. After Repeal, California vintners began ordering handmade barrels from France; they experimented with storing the red wines they created in small oak barrels instead of large casks. Most of us tend to call wooden casks, barrels. But, actually a barrel is a particular size and shape. A barrel is a cask, but not all casks are barrels. (Note: The prevalent shape and size of casks in use today were set by the American whiskey industry- the 180 to 200 liter barrel.)

Here They Are! Twenty-Four Tools in Order of Usage When Crafting a Barrel

I found the original list of twenty-four tools in an article on a website identified as the Revolutionary War Journal. This discovery enabled me to analyze the Wine History Project’s collection of Cooper’s tools with new eyes. I am sharing my analysis with you, identifying each tool on that list with a sketch.

The List of Tools a Cooper Needs to Make a Barrel

Please note that the examples in the Wine History Project Collections identified as “Gizmos & Gadgets” are marked with the BARREL seen on the side.

Broad or Heavy ax – roughly cuts the staves (planks for barrel’s side)

Side Or Broad Axe

2. Mallet – used to hammer the froe along the wood’s grain

Mallet

3. Froe (shake axe or paling knife) – cleaves wood by splitting it along the grain. L-shaped, one end of the blade is hammered into the end of a piece of wood in the direction of the grain, by rotating the haft (handle) the blade is twisted in the wood, thereby splitting the wood at the desired thickness for the stave

Froe, Frow, or Fromard

4. Backing or heading knife – used to shape the outside angles of the staves so they would fit tightly forming a seal

5.Crumming or Drawknife (also hollowing knife) – shaped the inside angles of the staves so they fit properly

Drawknife

6. Shaving horse (also shingle horse) – the cooper sits on the shaving horse and pulls a draw knife along the edges of the staves to cut the necessary transverse so the edges can be further shaped on the jointer.

Shaving Horse

7. Jointer – the stave is pushed through the jointer (five-foot board with fixed blade), to further bevel or slope the edges of the stave so when the staves are joined, there will be a tight fit.

8. Spokeshave – a single blade is set in a low angle in a wooden tool with its unique ability to whittle shavings and excel at shaving end grain.

9. Trussing adze – hammers on the hoops, shaping the cask over heat or steam

10. Cresset – small stove over which the staves & cask are heated for shaping

11. Adze – once cask is shaped, it is chimed – ends or edges of the staves (called chimes) are shaped using an adze

12.Topping or sun plane – along with the adze during the chiming stage, shapes and smooths the ends of the staves

“Sun” Plane or Topping Plane

13. Chiv – applies a perfect curve to the inside of the chime (edge of stave)

14.Croze – cuts a groove for the head of the cask

Croze

15. Roundshave – used to smooth the inside of a cask after both ends have been chimed and chime hoops applied

Croze

16. Bick iron – cooper’s anvil, rivets hammered into metal hoops

17. Dowelling stock – used when making heads and hoops, bores holes in timber so to join with dowels

18. Swift – saw to cut head to the size of the cask

19. Bow saw – also used to cut heads to the size of the cask

20. Handled, pod, or tapered auger – drilling bung holes or tap holes

21. Heading knife or Drawshave – Edges of the heads are shaped to fit into the groove carved into the casks ends

Billhook

22. Buzz – After both heads are in place, used to smooth the outside of the cask

23. Hammer & Driver – drives metal hoops into their final positions

Driver or Drift

Historical Tidbit About Wine and Barrels

“In nothing have the habits of the palate more decisive influence
than in our relish of wines.”
Thomas Jefferson, 1818

Thomas Jefferson had a cellar building on his estate. It was the first structure built on his property and was most likely used to store vegetable roots. Eventually, it was converted to a wine cellar.

Thomas Jefferson studied French wine when he worked in Paris. He shipped his favorite European wines to his estate in barrels. The moment he discovered somebody may have tasted the wine and or tampered with the wine he said, “No more barrels. I want it to be bottled in Europe.”