The Coopered Bucket and What to Buy

This module reconstructs North House Folk School’s four-day Coopering: Buckets in the Western European & American Style, taught by Eric Edgin. Each student makes “a wooden bucket from cedar using hand tools: froe, draw knife, hollowing knife, compass, and cooper’s joiner plane” ¹. The class’s own plan isn’t published; this follows the sources cited, with the design numbers below marked as estimates.

White cooperage

Coopers made casks for beer, rum, tobacco, and flour, and households used pails, tubs, and churns. Pails and churns are white cooperage, simpler than the tight, bulging casks that had to hold liquids under pressure ². At Colonial Williamsburg the coopers explain that 18th-century coopers shaped every stave by eye, without measuring, and that household pails didn’t need the skill of a tight cooper ³.

A bucket has straight, tapered staves: a cone, not a barrel’s bulge, so it needs no fire or steam. The staves are held by hoops, and a round bottom (the head) sits in a groove cut inside the bottom ends. The Williamsburg shop uses Atlantic white cedar ⁴; North House specifies only cedar ¹.

A bucket design

North House doesn’t publish its bucket’s size. A reasonable first bucket, as an estimate:

• Height about 10 inches, with two ear staves about 3 inches taller that carry the handle.
• Diameter about 11 inches outside at the top and 9 1/2 at the bottom. That holds about 2 1/2 gallons.
• 12 staves, so each edge is beveled 15 degrees (lesson 2 explains why). Staves about 3 inches wide at the top, narrowing toward the bottom; their widths can vary as long as they add up.
• Wall thickness about 5/8 inch finished.
• Two hoops, one near the bottom over the groove and one about two-thirds of the way up.

Draw the bucket full size from the side on a board before you start: the outline gives you the stave lengths, the taper, and where the hoops sit.

Cedar

Cedar is light, splits cleanly, and swells tight when wet. Use any straight-grained, knot-free cedar:

• Northern white cedar grows across the upper Midwest and is the likely wood of a Minnesota class.
• Atlantic white cedar is the Williamsburg wood ⁴.
• Western red cedar is sold at lumberyards in clear boards.

Riving from a log teaches the most and gives the strongest staves, since each one follows the grain. Port Townsend’s class uses Douglas fir or other old-growth softwood salvaged from buildings ⁵, so clear, quarter-sawn boards are a fair substitute. One maker milled white oak boards to 3/4 inch for 14 staves and 2 handle staves ⁶.

Hoops

Coopers made their own hoops. Metal bucket and barrel hoops run from 20 gauge to 3/16 inch thick depending on the vessel, usually with two rivets each, and are tapered to fit the staves ⁷. For a 2 1/2-gallon pail, 3/4 by 1/16-inch mild steel strap is about right. Old whiskey-barrel bands, cut down and re-riveted, work too ⁸.

Tools

North House’s list is short: froe, drawknife, hollowing knife, compass, and cooper’s jointer ¹.

• Cooper’s jointer. The largest of all planes, up to 6 feet long, used upside down and standing still while the cooper pushes the stave along its sole. It is often propped on legs at about 60 degrees with its toe on the floor ⁹. Dean Sinnott built a 5-foot one from the works of a Stanley No. 8 ⁸. For a bucket, an inverted bench jointer clamped at an angle will do.
• Hollowing knife. A curved drawknife for the inside of the staves ³. An inshave or a scorp also works.
• Croze. A fence that rides on the stave ends, carrying a small cutter that cuts the groove for the bottom ². You can make one.
• Topping (sun) plane. A curved plane that levels the stave ends ². A block plane works on a bucket this small.

James Gaster of Beaver Buckets sells a bucket kit, a book, and a DVD, all called How to Make a Coopered Wooden Bucket ¹⁰.

Try it

Make the bevel gauge first: two straight sticks about 14 inches long, hinged at one end with a leather strip and marked in inches from the hinge. It costs nothing and you’ll check every stave with it in lesson 2.