Traditional Cooper - George Smithwick - History and how to make a wooden bucket

okay I'm George Smithwick I just happened to be a sixth generation Cooper pretty lucky I guess but I've been doing it now for 30 odd years and I've had a great time doing it it's interesting to show people how these things are done because there's not many of us left and let's hope it carries on at some point well the word Cooper is a is a Latin word and coop means to contain so as it evolved the word Cooper become and it's a person who builds barrels buckets any vessel that holds either a fluid or a sausage skin it's just it just means to contain it within an area so that that's where coopering come from and there's various sides to coopering you've got white coopering which is someone who makes either buckets or butter churns or barrels the milk or cream or butter then you've got a dry Cooper is a person who just makes dry goods barrels for transporting fruit or sausage skins olives and helos and then you've got a wet Cooper who makes wine barrels beer barrels also makes buckets anything that has to holder it has to be watertight that will fluid tight I I fortunately I covered a whole lot of them in what I've been doing over the last thirty years I've made dry goods barrels I make buckets I make butter churns I make wine barrels beer barrels so for me I've just covered a lot I'm lucky the steps you're making a bucket at first or you joint the staves then you hollow them and back them right if you look closely you'll note there's a gap between the hoop and the back of the stave what I'm going to do now is called backing off the stable I'm going to knock off each corner so it fits neatly into that hoop so to do that I sit me backside down here and with this draw knife which is called a backing line you will know that it is curved so it allows me to follow the shape of the the hoop so by putting it in and it's just like a vise I just sit there and back it off now that if I've done it right should fit neatly up against that get that little shaving yet you'll note that that's now fitting neatly up against the stave so by the time I've done 18 which will go into making this bucket they'll all be nice and tight up against that hoop so I get pressure on every joint all the way real don't we sit ourselves down we should hear them enjoy life you may think that I'm doing this you feel like fast but after you've done quite a few hundred of these staves you know exactly how much you've got to take off without even looking at it you know you've got it right what we're about to do is what's called raising up the barrel or the bucket in this case it is a bucket so we're raising it up so I put a stave in I'll put a clip on it to hold it in place and the staves are putting you now are the handles of the bucket the first two are always the handles get them approximately opposite each other and now I have to fill it up so I just stand them up and then work me we're in now he's put that top hoop on which is a bar hoop which is as you can see they're quite heavy hoops now we've got to level up the bottom of the bucket by getting all of these staves to be level so to do that I just pick a point to start using my finger as a gauge to feel the bottom of it I just tap the staves up feel fairly good that drive this hoop down right now we've got that nice and level on the bottom when it when I did this bucket I felt the bottom of these to level them off and that's easy on a small bucket or a small barrel but if this were a big barrel to get it flush on the top you'd use what's called a topping plane now you'll notice it's curved so it follows the shape of the the barrel of the bucket that you do it so it's just it would be just a matter of putting it on and working it around like that until you got that bottom flat on a big barrel it's hard to use your finger to guide them to get them all nice and level buckets well that's easy that on the big barrels you just use a topping plane and it's just a nice sharp tool follows the shape of the barrel but our next job now is to cut a groove inside here to take the head or the bottom of the bucket so by using this tool what's called a Crow's it's got two little scribers and a raker so by setting that inside there and racking it around I can cut a groove in there now it's just a matter check and make sure I'm deep and up all the way round then I can see a couple of spots where I'm not all right I reckon that'll just about do me so now we've got to work out the circumference of that to find out that the radius for the head at this point I'm measuring the circumference of this groove that I've put in so I can find out the radius for the the head to go in there now if I go exactly or mark that so you can see where I'm starting there if I go exactly six times around that circumference it will give me the radius but having said that what I've done I've gone approximately a quarter of an inch past that joint so I've physically made the diameter a little bit bigger so to do the reason for doing that is that if I measure one half of the circle now if I turn that head around I'll step the compass back half of what I went past being almost a quarter of an inch and I will mark the other half of the circle now the reason for stepping the back half of what I went past is it now makes the diameter right in the length of the grain but slightly wider in the width two reasons for that timber is softer in its width than it is in its length and but it also shrinks in its width if this was a jointed head it would haven't joined down there or there or there and it have a bit of kabum Gihon which is a flag to to stop it from leaking so being wider it's going to put pressure on those joints and squash them all nice and tight now what I've got to do is cut this so that I can shave it down to the right size if you look at that you'll see that I've cut right down the middle of the line so I'm now making just a little bit smaller in diameter and that is so to allow it to go neatly into the bottom of that group and to get that right my angles when I shave would have to be perfect to get that tight now what I've done now I've put a set of rough centerline around that so that I can work out now how wide my groove has to be like of just I it to that center line I won't worry about putting two lines and I just put a rough line around here so I know where to come back to with the angle of me head and they're only rough lines I'm only finger gauging them too nothing special what I've got now I've shaves the head down so of taping it so that that will fit into the groove now it's it's only eye that's telling me that that's right after having done so many heads you get you get to know when you've got your angles right and your your width of your groove right so now I've looked at that around there and I reckon I'm pretty close to right so now we're going to knock that hoop off we're going to put some linseed meal which is just a it's it's a at the minute it's a paste it starts out as a powder after they extract the the oil out of linseed they crush up the seed and make it into a powder I put a little bit of water with it turn it into a paste when that dries inside that groove if the bucket ever thinks it's going to leak this will expand and take up and it won't leak it will stop it from leaking so now I've got to drive this hoop off so I can get the head in nothing technical about putting this in it's just a matter of squeeze it into the the groove we've got to be careful we don't have too much in there before I put too much in there it's going to stop the head from going in and seeding improperly so I go around it like this poke it all in and then I'll scrape something out at the end so I know I've got just the right amount in there that's a matter of poke that the head in as I poke this head into the bottom of the bucket you will notice that the stage will start to open up they'll get a gap in them but if I get that down into the groove they should all just close up nicely or very close to close up now it's gone a little bit far pop is in now to drive this hoop back on what I'll do I'll chalk the inside of this hoop you may think that the chalk will help it slip on easier but what it does it makes the hoop stick it'll stick to the timber gives it like a sandpaper edge so now just drive that hoop back up and if I've got it right you'll fall note there'll be little bits of that linseed meal start squeezing out now to make sure I've got that staves seeded down around that head go around the outside and just tap it until they all seat down neatly now let's just look at it see that it appears to be sat down neatly you'll note there's little bits of linseed oil losing out of the joint so that's a real good sign that we've got a nice tight tight fit right now we're going to sit back on the workhorse we're going to shave the outside of this to get it to a relatively round shape so we can fit hoops to it all right so I'm back down on the on the donkey or the workhorse whatever right on let's bend a I'm slaying the hoop because this now as you can see is a fairly straight piece of iron hoop on I've got to turn it into a circle but also have to have it so that it follows the shape of the bucket to do that by hitting on one side of that piece of metal I can physically spread it so if you're going to be a bit of banging and clanging but you'll see it happened you can see it starting to curve already now if you look at the side of that you can self put an angle onto it so that now will follow the shape of that bucket by the time I pull that around and market and put the rivet through it it'll fit perfectly to that so you see that slight angle on it that's enough to follow the shape of the bucket I put the hoop around the bucket approximately where I want it to to finish up and I mark it about 3/8 of an inch past the end of that overlap when I put the rivet in I'll bring the hoop up to that chalk mark and that'll give me a nice tight fit where it needs to be you'll note I've got holes in one end of the hoop already I put that across to the overlap I set it on top of the rivet and I've got a hit on top of there and punch the rivet up through it so now if you look where that outside hoop goes around and the inside there's a step there's a gap so if I hit right at the end of that I can bring the outside to meet the inside so to put it back on the Bitcoin and just hit right at the end of it now you can see the outsides come down to meet the inside the time I put that on there now it'll come down nice and flat now that hoop will not go over the top of that one so I've got to knock that hoop off to get it on they just run it around to look we'll see that it's relatively straight around the bucket which it is now to matter trim off the bottom put the charm hoop on this one when I put it on I put about half of the hoop sticking up so I know when I get it down off and get it to pull right down tight you'll see more linseed oil oozing out just a bit tighter again I'll be happy with that now I've just got to level off the top of it round it over a little bit so there's no sharp points for anyone to hurt himself here comes a good Pat the fun part with a rope handle we're putting an eye splice for the handle so if I pick up roughly how big I want the the eye of the loop to be and what I've done I've opened up the Rope into three three cords and I start out with the middle one you can see this one two three always start with the middle so having determined where me always going to start I just open the Rope up like that and I feed the middle one through that hole pull it up turn it around and open the next one up poke it through pull it up go backwards open it up again pull it through so now I'm back to where I was I've still got 1 2 3 so it's now back start with the middle one again open it up poke it through a real worm poke it through go back to and poke it through and then pull it up again just holding it tight here and pulling it upwards just gets it to sit down nice and neatly and it's back to the middle one again poke it through and when you tie it off nope now once I get that up through there and I trim it off it'll be as neat as a pin they're definitely rub it together to get it nice and neat then it's picked how long you want the handle to be some people like to lay it over and work out where they want it to hang I've done quite a few so I know roughly where it's going to hang and that's just cutting me rope turn it around and start again open it up normally open it up three times one two three and then back to me middle one again and if that right always start with the middle one of you don't start with the middle you're going to be in all sorts of Bhalla a bit short and as you do it you've got to be careful not to fray the end of the rope otherwise it makes it hard to to poke it through and it becomes very untidy this in itself was another trade on the ships sail makers and rope makers and splices and that was another another job again so everybody had their own little job on the ships along with Coopers and cooks and everything else and so the Coopers would have relied on these other tradesmen to produce the right to their buckets yep yep but today you're covering all those trades here yeah I don't go to the extent of making the right but I must admit now just pull that down into into place now just trim off the ends so a nice sharp knife there we have it now what we have to do is make sure it doesn't leak or get a bit of water in a foot we've put a bit in it well that's not legal not outrigger I'll put that up no leaks I can't see any not little Demi that's it I got done you it's made out of carry pawn and four buckets or use carry pawn because it will not impart any flavor into the water or milk or that that you put in that bucket if I use to mountain-ash overnight with water in it the water would turn blue you could still drink it but it did you'd have a flavor in it so it wouldn't be nice so in Australia for for white cooperage they used calorie poem because there was plenty of it and it just did it's just one of those Timbers it's a food-grade timber it doesn't impart any flavor into anything so that's why they used it in Europe they use Beach they use chestnut they're probably they're the only ones that they use over there for white cooperage dry goods well that don't matter you can use just about any timber as long as you can bend it to and dry coupe bridges barrels are fairly straight there's not much bilging them the bilge being the curved in a barrel so they're easy to been wet cooperage depending on what it was for if it was for oil it didn't matter on the timber if it's for beer or wine nine times out of ten it's oak what's your favorite wood I it's it has to be oak it's it's just a beautiful timber it's French oak English oak Memel oak all of the European Oaks are fairly soft or say softly they're clean to work they're nice to work with American Oaks a bit harder got a little bit more angry grain in it but it's still a nice timber to work but if I had my choice that'd be French oak or English oak here and what's a like working with your hands for it for a job what's it like Draghi I don't know anything else so your hands your most valuable tool oh yeah yeah yes obviously your brain tells your hands what to do but to me I feel it's the other way around it's me hands that are telling me brain that that's how it's working but no point it never ends I'd be lost these buckets will end up in the hands of children and they'll be using them to do hand washing and see what it was like to to do it in the past do you think that's an important thing for them to have access to of course it is yeah yeah I mean that's part of a problem today with with a lot of things they don't appreciate where things come from whether we're done and they're like how they got to where they are now or now we've got plastic buckets for plastic buckets flour wave wooden bucket stone wooden bucket all still sit there and it's 40 mile an hour when a plastic bucket will be gone you won't see it uh-huh how far can you go back with your family history you said your sixth generation yeah well what's that make it more great-great-great great-great-grandfather yeah so here it goes back a bit you know quite a bit about your up to your grandfather isn't it yeah what are you watch beyond white folks I never even met my great-grandfather but he just happened to dot die on a date a few years apart obviously he died on the 30th day of the of the 11th and I was born on the 30th of the 11th quite a few years apart but as going to be something that they ever what do you do yeah those sort of things happening in your life we've got end up doing what they did Daniel yeah so when his generation have been one of the last generations that was really working as a full-time Cooper in the traditional sense all died my father was working as a Cooper as a as a traditional job he he worked at maize products the federal Cass company and then ended up at Canton ordered brewery but prior to that he worked at the Yorkshire brewery and the Abbotsford brewery and then they were all taken over by Carlton United he ended up his working life or not his working life but until they closed down the Cooper shop in 1954 I think it was it holds water what money I want of my to live in here a mic and bucket it's a practical thing if someone's to buy this bucket I know they're gonna have this bucket in 30 years time if I look after it it's a practical thing and what more can you ask for a bucket better which a bit of wood you've created something in a lot of Cupra jizz it was common practice to prebend your staves so they'd be prevented not the exact Bend that they were going to end up but being pre bent it meant that you could joint them just by holding them on a plane like this and then just running them across to get the to get the right angle on the side of the stave so that the next one butted up to it and you went around so that was common practice but but prior to that preventing them they would use what's called a side axe and that's just a bloody big axe and they would preach ape there to stave so if you look at that side of the stave it's well it's got a bit of a bend in it but it's relatively straight but this side I've already knocked a bit off so you can see that it's got that curve on it so then it would be back to to this jointer again but you would work it differently you would only do one half and then turn it around and do the other half and then once you got it almost right you would push it down but you would run your stave upwards like that so it followed that curve around the outside and basically the same thing now these bits of tools that I've got laying here on the floor they all had their little jobs when when you're following the inside of a safe so that it follows the inside shape of the the barrel you would use an inside shave which is like that drawn off I was using earlier which was a backing on this is curved the other way and sharpened the opposite way you can see the curve in it so that then you can get the by putting that into your block and holding it you could shave the inside of your stove so that it got that nice inside shape or you could use what's called a bully plane that's curved that way and that way so it would be done the same doing the same job as that inside shave but you use it just a bit differently that would then do the same job got you hollow inside now this is another type of draw knife it's called a jigger crazy name where they got that from another but when you've got your barrel all stood up to make that nice and round on the inside you would hang that inside it and just shave around like but like that so you put that shape into the top of your barrel or your bucket was done with that tool there by suspending it inside and that gives you that shape in solid there then there was also that tool which was developed a little bit later it does the same job there's what the jigger does but this is just a plain it's a whole lot easier to operate you set that on top of your barrel and just rocked it around and it shaved it out then you put your groove in which was done with that and that what we did on the buckets does the same job it cuts a groove into there you can just boy running that's sitting on top of the barrel and that's adjustable in height so you can lift that up and down to to work out the gallonage of your barrel if your stave was a little bit longer needed to come down a bit further or up a bit further you could adjust it by just adjusting that up and down in there then you've got your ads which was used to put that shape into the top of the stave and that stun boy holding a barrel on a block and just chipping around like that working around it and why do you need to put that when when a barrel is on its end you'll notice most barrels wine barrels the hoops set up a little bit higher so that when you're rolling a barrel it's rolling on the on the hook not the timber occasionally they got down a bit lower so they had it so they were only running on a little bit of the stave not the whole lot of it so that's one reason it was taping in the other reason you say you can slip your head in you put your head in when when I did the bucket I put it in from the inside you can't do that with a barrel you've got to push it in from the top so it'll physically slide down that that taper and you've got you what's called a bung borer it's just a tapered knife-edged semi half or semi auger you drill a hole a small hole India barrel to stave and then by putting that in it and turning it around give you a tapered hole so your bung and just tap in and stay in there and there's all different shapes and sizes of these fellows - that's just four little barrels that's called a flagging on and a flagging iron is used if if you've got a slight leak in a in a barrel you can with by tightening that hoop off and loosening a little you can put that on there and physically pull that stave outwards so you can put a little bit of flag in there which is kabum gear read that grows in the dams you can just slip it in the in the joint and that just just by putting it on your body and bending it it'll pull that state backwards these are little homemade units their head pullers they're for pulling heads up into barrels and that's all they're useful and no other reason you I don't know if you want to film it or not but you can do that on one of those these barrels say you've got your head poking down in there you hook that little bit onto it and then by lifting onto that rivet you can pull the head upwards it just pulls it up it just I made little units and an obvious thing just a set of dividers a compass senator borders just for working at you circumference or you your diameter of your head that's it and that's just a smattering of tools while it was extremely important because you needed to carry water how are you going to carry water in your hand now someone had to make a bucket or prior to that they had doesn't we them we're vessels in that pretty heavy and they broke easily so as they they worked along they figured out that they could make a wooden bucket they did that if you needed to store or make say sauerkraut that's done in a bucket or a small barrel say you needed a watertight vessel in that case that we use in salt then cabbage I think they put a little bit of water and it so that that to hold fluid they just they just had to have them yeah you made butter how did you make butter booting and daylights out of a bit of cream where we are going to do it inside a bucket in sort of attitude so they they just come up with systems to make life easy for everybody and it just happened to be that a Cooper was the bloke that got the job of doing those things soon yeah it was very important while in Australia the Cooper's Union was the biggest of any Union in Australia so and I think they were disbanded in in 70 something like they closed down the Cooper's Union but back into the early 20s and 30s prior to the depression and the Second World War it was huge industry they used it for everything whether it was y mob Australia it was beyond it I say it was a big industry yes and even still then they were using dry goods barrels for transporting sausage skins and and olives and rice and flour so yeah it was it was big real big I when I started work at 15 I originally wanted to be a commercial artist but being color blind that doesn't work real good next best thing was do coopering it dad did it me grandfather did it they all do it but there was no Cooper shops left in Victoria I having said that there was one but in 1966 that closed down I started working 65 so I was advised not to do that and mum and dad weren't keen on me going to Adelaide to learn it so I took on cabinet making which which I did for quite a few years and I loved it I enjoyed it and when I got to when I think it was 13 or some my father passed away and me mother me father had asked me mother to they obviously talked about this if I happened to go before you can you put in the paper last in a line fifth generation Cooper and that was all good and within of the funeral parlor they're talking about this and I didn't gel with me so I said to me mother I said please don't put that in and well she didn't it put me and well I put myself in a position where I didn't have any choice I had to do it because I'd asked for that not to be done when he wanted it done though saleable to heck with I going to do it so I did it come home and much to my watch discussed and threw in a good job come on and had nothing not a cent what way it's like we obviously had money but I didn't have a sale for a barrel or a bucket or any child and here we got we'll make a few and we stir Miranda a few Warner's and here we ask 30 odd years later still doing it there something worked that was with it anyway in front you've got something very special eat I know I can he he it's in you election yeah this is can you tell us what this is and what it says this is a book on measurements for buckets and barrels and casks and that was given to my father by our Cooper at the yorkshire brewery and it's got written on the inside of the front cover given to less Smithwick by alec cook a Cooper at the yorkshire brewery Wellington Street Collingwood about 1942 with their strict instructions never to be showin to anybody else and here we are what are we 2015 and I'm showing this to everybody I hope that our morning so what it what's exactly in there that's a personal yes it's all measurements that were written down by Alec Cook on the first pages on spirit casks and it gives you the gallonage down this side whether it's a one gallon up to a 16 gallon on that page it gives you the length of the stave how wide the start of how big the barrel is on the end and it gives you how big it is in the bilge that's being the fattest part of the barrel so one one gallon barrel it's ten and a half inches long the diameter at the end is six and a half inches the bilge is seven and a half inches and it would pass if it was eight and a half inches and the past means that that the bilge it could be either seven and a half or eight and a half inches and to get the correct gallon each unit if it's seven and a half inches that means the head has to be closer to the end than what it does if it's eight and a half inches so you've got to position your spot where you put your grooving and they had a set of dividers which went inside the barrel to the groove so that you knew you set that divider up and that would tell you how far down your groove nest of the yeah but this is everything in there we've got port types on this page and they go up to 46 colors so these would have been standard vision and stuff yep so why is it so important not to show it to someone else that is the story on that damn Devon oh well that lovely whoa it was such a secretive industry it was because our all doing police work it was you know the more the more barrels you made the more money you're paid so everything become a secret you're not going to tell tell a bloke exactly how long he's going to make something you're going to let him work that out for himself yeah yeah well that's it not give you an explainer the advantage of doing things quicker than what you can do because you've got this book and you know where longer that's the bay and you know what diameter a stably so what tell him that's why now I do I tell everybody there or don't even answer that yes well yeah it's called the full circle yeah I because because I they've they didn't do it all themselves some in the industry moved on Disney that's why we have all this machinery whereas at the start I didn't have this machine without doing it all boy in and now it's got to the stage world wealth near we've got plastic we don't new wooden bucket well some people still do I'm glad you do but they've just become non-existent we don't need them they're not as they're not a necessity anymore yeah we still need them but not like we used to need them that's it I mean I can remember going down the wharfs with me father I was probably only that forward in third Oh important and we'd buy our bourbon barrels him bring him home and he'd tip 10 or 20 liters of boiling water inside the barrel put the bung in shake the living daylights out of it 15 20 minutes later he had the best bourbon you could beautiful okay that's so better so what let's a barrel over down over time is it the same thing as a bucket that jointing no now if a barrel or a buckets been made properly in the first place what is going to let it down his that it's left dry too long or it's stored in a hot place if it's stored in a cool place it'll stay fairly tight even even if it does leak a little bit if it was made properly in the first place you put a bit of water in or amount of water in it or whatever in it it will take up again might take a day won't take off a day but it'll take up if it didn't leak in the first place it'll it'll always become watertight again always the only thing that can go wrong is that the staves will shrink more than what the head will say you may at some point have to recut a head in but it'll still come back to it Paul you

Channel: Sydney Living Museums

Views: 1,139,089

Rating: 4.9488411 out of 5

Keywords: Sydney, Living, Museums, history, Cooper, tradition, trade, woodwork, tools, tradesman, wooden bucket, building, making

Id: GE7QA1chUzw

Length: 52min 28sec (3148 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 26 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/stuffucanmake]

It's an hour well spent!!

[u/PrudentPlant]

Cool. Thought this was "Peter and the Farm."

Hard work. Anyway, Please see Peter and the Farm, if you can. Free on Amazon, still, I believe.

[u/mr_charliejacobs]

Nice video OP. I really enjoyed it

[u/slfnflctd]

Once I started, I couldn't stop watching-- there is something deeply comforting about the setting and presentation here, it's almost mesmerizing.

I will probably never need such knowledge, but I'll be damned if I wouldn't take his line of work over most others I've been stuck with in my life (if I could support myself with it, ha).

[u/MisterDadToYou]

What's it about though?

[u/robertredberry]

I loved it, thanks!

[u/preprandial_joint]

Is that Arthur Shelby in retirement?