Croze, Howel Or Chiv?

No, this is not a new dance craze. It could be said that these terms describe different types of cuts in a wood craft person’s skill set. For our purpose, these terms describe some of the tools that are used in making casks. Casks are named according to the amount they hold. A barrel is just one size of cask.

Historically, all types of provisions were amassed in barrels; meats, fish, some vegetables, fermented sauerkraut, pickles, grain, flour, eggs (packed in straw), beer, cider, whiskey, wine. Most any food stuff that could be stored for a length of time would be warehoused in a barrel. Additionally, pitch, tar, turpentine, and other non-foodstuffs could also be stored in barrels. So, it goes without saying that any person skilled at making barrels was an important person.

That person, known as a cooper, was a maker and repairer of casks made from wood. For hundreds of years and until the 1950s hand making and repairing casks was a highly skilled, physically demanding job and had a seven-year apprenticeship. Depending on the business of the local community, coopers made casks for specific purposes. And in some of those communities, prominent businesses often employed their own coopers or had their own cooperage facility. Some examples would be the Navy, the fishing industry, turpentine industries, breweries, or wineries – to name a few.

There were four main types of cooper depending on the type of casks made:

1. Dry Cooper (or ‘Bobber’) – made casks for dry goods e.g. tools, fruit, vegetables, seeds.
2. White Cooper – made straight-sided open casks to hold water, milk, butter, cheese, coal. The village cooper was usually a White Cooper doing maybe a little wet-tight work.
3. Wet (or ‘Tight’) Cooper – made casks for long term storage of liquids under pressure e.g. beer, wine, spirits.
4. Dry-Tight Cooper – made casks for goods where moisture/air needed to be kept out e.g. flour, gunpowder, fish, tar, oils.

This article’s focus is about the tools that are used in a cooperage to make the cuts at the ends of the barrels. In later articles, I will discuss other tools utilized in a cooperage.  For now, let’s begin with basic terminology.

The Vocabulary of Cooperage

The groove at either end of the staves of a cask or barrel into which the head fits is the CROZE. This groove is what holds the ends in place. The diameter of the barrel determines the curve of the croze and the croze cutter is held at the right height to cut the groove for the head or bottom of the barrel. There is a guide that fits in the barrel to hold it in the curve as the cutter cuts the groove.

The CHIME is the beveled edge at the top and bottom of the barrel cut with a cooper’s adze (more on this tool in another WHP Collection article). The top of the chime is leveled off with a special plane known as a cooper’s sun plane. Next, the CHIV (also called a HOWEL in some areas), is smoothed in preparation of cutting the groove known as the croze.

So, this can be very confusing since the names of the parts of the barrel can also be the names for a cooper’s tools.

Chiv

A chiv is a tool consisting of a block with a projecting steel blade, used to smooth a wooden or other surface by paring shavings from it.

The flincher is a chiv-like tool with a fixed blade which cuts a deep slope of the top end chime of a herring barrel so that the head will fit more easily. The curved block of wood supports a curved plane with the blade set on one side facing outwards. The blade is kept in place by a wooden wedge. The blade and two wedges are loose. It’s a beautiful wooden tool, and it looks like a plane.

David R. Barton (7/4/1805 – 4/26/1875) 

The edged-tools manufacturer, D.R. Barton was founded in 1832 by David Barton after apprenticing in nailmaking and edge tools between 1826 and 1832. In 1849 there were at minimum, 80 people working for D.R. Barton were making adzes, axes, carpenter tools, chisels, cooper’s tools, drawknives, hammers, hatchets, picks, tinsmith tools and wooden planes.

In 1865 the name had changed to D.R. Barton & Co., with Royal L. and William R. Mack as additional partners. The great flood of Rochester occurred in 1865 and it destroyed the manufacturing building that David Barton had purchased in 1832. He borrowed $200,000 from the Macks to rebuild his company. Peak employment for this business was in 1870 when there were over 190 employees.

In 1874, David Barton and his sons Charles and Edward started a second company, which they named David R. Barton Tool Co., buying back the original company. At that point David Barton started stamping his tools D.R. Barton 1832 to distinguish his tools from the Macks’ tools. David Barton died in 1875 and in 1879, the D.R. Barton Tool Co. business was sold in receivership to Mack & Co. by David Barton’s family. The Macks kept using the trademark name of D.R. Barton & Co. from 1880 until 1923.

NOTE: if the maker’s mark on the toe of a woodworking plane is D.R. Barton Rochester N.Y. in an oval, with 1832 in the middle, then it dates from 1874 or later. Other undated versions of D.R. Barton & Co. Rochester N.Y. marks were used from 1865 to 1923.

From tight Croze Plane (on body)
WHP-COOP63C

Howel

The howel tool is used by coopers for smoothing, scallop out, and chamfering their work, especially the inside of casks. In other words, they howel a cask. The cooper levels a section of the interior of the barrel just before cutting a groove, which will hold the top or bottom in place. The cooper’s plane has a convex sole for smoothing the insides of casks and for chamfering, crozing, and chiming.

Example of Patent for Croze/Howel

In the description of the application for patent was the statement, “Device consists in providing a tool for coopers’ use which shall combine both a croze and a howel. A croze and howel in one tool, both of which operate conjointly, two operations upon the cask or barrel are performed at the same time, and the one assists the other. Time and money would be saved.”

Croze

A cooper’s croze plane is a specialized tool made to perform a single but very important task. The croze’s toothed blade cuts a groove into the inside end of the staves that form a bucket or barrel to create a slot that holds the bottom and lid tightly in place. The croze looks like a curved plane, but it has teeth to cut the groove.

The origin of the word croze is perhaps from early in the 17th century where it might have originated from the French creux, creuse  – meaning “hollow.”

A hogshead (abbreviated “hhd”, plural “hhds”) is a large cask of liquid (or, less often, of a food commodity). More specifically, it refers to a specified volume, measured in either imperial or U.S. customary measures, primarily applied to alcoholic beverages, such as wine, ale, or cider. The name hogshead originally derives from a 15th century English term ‘hogges hede’, which referred to a unit of measurement equivalent to 63 gallons  (238.7 liters). It also can be a measure of capacity for beer equal to 64 gallons (245.5 liters).  The modern-day hogshead is officially 54 imperial gallons.

This example from the Wine History Project Collection is a primitive version of a hogshead croze, in which a little toothed saw, protruding from a single sliding peg, fenced, makes a preliminary channel and must afterwards be widened by a “v” shaped blade.

The movable wooden stock, V-shaped in cross-section and convexed longitudinally, is iron-rimmed at its apex.  It is adjustable on screws penetrating the fence (a large flat semi-circle of wood) which latter is held horizontally on the barrel rim, as the instrument. It is then pushed around the close-set stave tops, across the grain, and cuts the needed circular groove to receive the barrel head.  The triple blade, consisting of two routing teeth preceding a plow tooth, would not finish the job, for it would only cut a rectangular notch too narrow for the purpose, hence the need for the croze.

Downright Barrel Shave

A downright is a shave used to scrape down the outside of a cask to avoid splinters. The cooper smooths the outside with a downright, large-handled shave. Before setting the barrel head, the cooper smooths the inside surface of some barrels with a stoup plane and an inside shave (or inshave).

In Conclusion

Many hardware stores sold cooperage tools between 1872 and 1920. We found some of our information for this article in an advertisement from a Schwabacher Hardware Co. catalog. We also found information regarding D.R. Barton from the 1999 Directory of American Toolmakers.