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As I was writing it, one of the many areas I had to research was the coopering trade. Coopers were standard fixtures on ships, as well as on plantations, breweries, wineries, distilleries and any other industry that required containers for the commodities they produced.
To put it in modern terms: You know those big shipping containers that bring stuff to your local Wal-Mart? Or how about those beautiful brown boxes that come to your door from Amazon. I had ancestors in the s who were coopers, and while I have their estate records naming all of the tools they owned, until recent months, I had limited understanding of how they were all put into practice. While I knew that casks or barrels, as we might commonly call them today were used to store virtually everything in colonial times: There are also tuns, pipes, puncheons, hogsheads, and so forth, all named depending on their size and purpose.
I also learned that there is a difference between wet coopering and dry coopering. As you might guess, wet coopering involved making containers that would hold liquids, while dry coopering produced containers that held dry substances such as tobacco or gun powder. This website does a thorough job of discussing the trade, as well as the cask-making procedure.
Even after watching the video, and reading several websites about coopers and barrel-making, I still had questions.
Fortunately, I knew where I could turn for answers. A few weeks ago, he was gracious enough to answer several questions for me in great detail. Would they shape all of their staves first, and then move through the steps for all of the barrels in sequence, or would they just move forward making one barrel at a time? In most circumstances, individual coopers worked on a single container from start to finish. In addition, because the work is all done visually no patterns or calculations , the check is to see the pieces go together.
The key would be to ensure you had sufficient staff to achieve the necessary production. Having said that, most coopers making barrels were working on site for a specific industry at a brewery, for instance , and were constantly producing casks, so that the finished containers could simply be drawn from stock whenever needed.
I mean, if there were a few men, would they all be shaping staves at the same time, or might it be that each would be handling a different part of the barrel-making process? An exception to this rule could be found on plantations with slave coopers, who were sometimes employed in gangs where tasks were divided up. The fire used to heat a cask through is sized in relation to the cask being bent, so the heating time tends to be roughly the same regardless of the size of the cask.
It should take about 20 minutes or so to heat the wood to the point where it is pliable enough to bend. From what materials were the final hoops typically made? Not for gunpowder, but for commodities as mentioned above.
The final hoops could be made either of metal usually iron, but copper or brass in the case of gunpowder , or of wood. In the case of iron hoops, the material was produced and sold as coopers hoop iron by mills the same ones that produced nail rod for smiths, etc. The bending and riveting to form that material into the hoops is done cold. In the case of wooden hoops, which were very common on tobacco hogsheads and casks for other dry goods exported from the colonies, they were made primarily from saplings split in half and bent while green, and notched at either end in order to hold the ends together.
Or would he be expected to just dive right in for whatever kind of work was being done at the time? Usually an apprentice would be put to work fairly quickly, as the idea was to train the apprentice as quickly as possible and then to make money off of his or her labor for as long as possible within the overall timeframe of the apprenticeship. Developing the skills meant building one skill on top of another, so the apprentice would normally be giving one particular task to start with — hollowing staves, for example.
Once that skill was well developed, another — backing staves — would be added. One by one, skills were added until ultimately the apprentice had all the skills necessary to produce the finished product. It depends on the type of container, and it depends on the day. Thomas Jefferson wrote in that he expected the coopers at his grist mill to turn out an average of 5 flour barrels a day each.
The time of year and the weather greatly affect the length of the workday, as there are more hours of workable daylight in the summer and fewer in the winter. There are also more hours of workable daylight on a clear, sunny day than on a cloudy, rainy one.
Depending on where the apprentice was in the course of the apprenticeship, he could either impose a substantial impediment to productivity in the early stages as his learning drew from the production time of one of the skilled workers, or he could be as productive as any of the other four coopers if he was towards the end of the apprenticeship.
Keep in mind that the casks were usually made where the product going inside was produced — beer barrels at the brewery, gunpowder kegs at the powder mill, flour barrels at the grist mill, and so on. It would be very unusual to find coopers producing much variety. One other thing, were the barrel heads made on site, or did they come from a third-party? Hallman also sent me a couple of Word documents that were produced for use there at the Cooperage.
I did not seek permission to republish those documents here, but I would imagine that if you had specific questions about how CWF goes about training their apprentices in the trade, they would probably be happy to send them to you. As I mentioned above, Mr. It was about John Alden, who served as cooper aboard the Mayflower All merchant ships need coopers to look after their merchandise.
The money is very good in the merchant service. I make 21 shillings a month. I was a cooper on land. On land, I only make a smaller portion of 20 shillings.
In weather there can be damage from the goods rolling into each other. If anything is damaged, I will use my woodworking to repair it. Why is the job of cooper on board a ship so important? Most of the supplies that a ship carries are stored in casks and barrels.
Coopers like myself are on board to repair the ones that get damaged during rough weather. In storms, such as we have had this voyage, there is much pitching and rolling — the stores can get greatly knocked about and bruised. Being only made of wood, although stout English oak, the staves can crack or hoops can loosen.
When this happens, the stores within the cask get damaged, either by water leaking in or the stores themselves leaking out. I am kept aboard to prevent this from happening.
Yes, although we have little enough water aboard. On long voyages such as this, we carry some for cooking and for the livestock. Most of the casks contain beer for drinking, biscuits, stores of grain, salt beef and fish, dried peas, and such like. There are also barrels holding cloth, iron tools, gunpowder, fishing equipment, and other stores the passengers will need for the new settlement. How difficult will it be to set up a shop as a cooper once you get to the New World?
In Virginia, I expect there will be a call for my services. The colonists hope to get much profit by the fishing there, and those fish will need to be dried, salted, and packed in barrels before being shipped back. Seasoning the wood will take several months at least. I was just wondering if you have ever seen a double old barrel with a wood rind sealing the two barrels together and what it might be used for? Coopers were important because they made the containers that held virtually every commodity of the era.
They also made buckets and wash tubs, and even wooden tankards mugs. As far as benefits, anyone skilled in a useful trade would have been in a position to make a living to provide for themselves and their family, as well as being able to provide a much-needed service to the community. The price would vary widely. Making the heads is part of the process of making the cask.
Why have you decided to leave England? What was your job in England? What is your job as cooper of the Mayflower? Have you had to repair barrels of water and things? Email Facebook Pinterest Print Twitter. Buy the books here.
Who Gets to Tell the Story? Comments I was just wondering if you have ever seen a double old barrel with a wood rind sealing the two barrels together and what it might be used for?
If I can find any information I will be sure to post it! Why was the cooper important to colonial america and what benefits came from being a cooper? What was cost of a hogsheads barrel in colonial times? Adam Fletcher Adventure Series.
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