Tag: cooperage

Buckets, Mini-Casks, and a New Coopering Video by Marshall Scheetz

Wood Marshall Scheetz

Cooperage by Marshall Scheetz in our shop ->

As a passionate advocate for spreading knowledge and appreciation of craft, I am quietly proud that the most visited page on my website is “The Cooper’s Tools of the Trade” that links to a blog post I wrote several years ago about master cooper Marshall Scheetz from Williamsburg, Virginia. Since then, thousands of people have landed on this page after searching terms like “cooper’s tools,” or “coopering tools.”

New cooperage by Marshall Scheetz of Jamestown Cooperage

These online searches show there is a growing demand for learning coopering skills. “People are fascinated about making buckets and especially tankards, but they quickly realize that the process is more difficult than they think,” Marshall said when we chatted online one afternoon at the end of April. “I’ve been doing this for over 20 years, and it’s still hard for me!” He joked.

We both tried to guess why so many people were searching about coopering tools on the Internet. I commented that several people had inquired about purchasing these tools. Coopers usually find their own tools by refurbishing old ones or modifying new ones to meet their specific needs, so using other tools that are not their own is unnatural. Marshall elaborated that “these tools are like an extension of myself,” so they always travel with him when he does demonstrations around the country.

Marshall holding a cooper’s hand adze used to rough out the edges of oak staves.
Photo courtesy of Marshall Scheetz

In 2019, Marshall taught a “remaking” class at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. During the one week course, students learned to re-make a wine cask into a coopered vessel. By including the remaking aspect, Marshall wanted students to have a deeper understanding of how cooperage works. He mentioned that this particular course was one of the most difficult he had taught because he wanted everyone to take away a nice, coopered vessel at the end of the workshop. “I think some people wanted to come for a week and thought that they’d be able to go home and make buckets by themselves,” he said. But general woodworking skills don’t easily translate into coopering, and to be adept at building a simple bucket takes far longer to master than a week.

An oak bucket that I’ve been using for the last 8 years for carrying water and flowers in my garden. The coopered bucket adds beauty to my garden unlike the incongruous plastic ones. They also don’t tip over when I cut flower stems underwater to make them last longer in a vase.

The new mini-cask that Marshall made for Entoten comes from re-used oak wine barrel staves. When I unboxed the cask, I could still smell the wine that these staves once held.

A mini-cask known as a breaker made from reused oak staves from a wine barrel.

I asked Marshall whether it is more difficult to fix or re-make a damaged cask.  “They are not any more difficult, but it can take as long or longer than making a new one, and refurbishing used staves really blunts the tools,” Marshall said. “So traditionally, coopers had two sets of tools, one for repairs and re-making and another for new cooperage.” He also explained that these mini-casks are known to coopers as “breakers,” as they filled the space between large casks. Casks had to be packed tightly in the hull of a ship during transport because if they moved, they could damage the ship or injure people.

A sectional diagram of the late 19th Century whaling bark Alice Knowles that depicts its hull packed with barrels.
University of Washington Libraries.

When we met virtually, Marshall was in the middle of editing a video of himself making a cask to present at the annual meeting of the Early American Industries Association. The video is amazing to watch because you will be able to see a cask being made from start to finish using traditional tools. You will also get a glimpse of the rhythmical steps and sounds of Marshall hooping a cask, known as the cooper’s “dance.”

Before we finished our chat, Marshall moaned about the difficulty of creating a cask-making video by himself. “I never understood why shooting a movie takes so many people. It’s all clear to me now,” he exclaimed. I was amused by the contrast of such a complex production to the artistic beauty and simplicity of his cask-making process, all carried out single-handedly.

 

Cooperage by Marshall Scheetz: The Keeper of an Ancient Skill

Wood Marshall Scheetz

Coopered vessels by Marshall Scheetz in our shop ->

Until I saw the solid and tightly coopered sea service bucket by Marshall Scheetz of Jamestown Cooperage, I never gave much thought to how, even just 100 years ago, coopered wooden containers were essential for people in their daily lives.

A sea service bucket by Marshall Scheetz. It is so called because it doesn’t tip over easily with the wide base. This bucket has been used outdoors for carrying water and other garden chores for over a year and is still completely watertight.

“It is so interesting to look at 18th century illustrated encyclopedias. Almost every image in every chapter depicts people from all walks of life using barrels, tubs and buckets for their work”, Marshall points out. He is one of only half a dozen or so remaining master coopers in the U.S. with the ability to create and repair all kinds of cooperage using traditional tools. The types of work that Marshall makes include the most difficult watertight casks for carrying valuable liquid like wine to everyday vessels like tubs, buckets and tankards that have now mostly been replaced by plastic counterparts.

Marshall Scheetz at a coopering demonstration in Saratoga in 2016.
Photo courtesy of Marshall Scheetz

Marshall learned his coopering skills during a six-year apprenticeship under master cooper James Pettengell at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Since 1971, only four people completed the apprenticeship under master coopers George and James Pettengell, who were brothers that moved from London to set up the cooper shop at Colonial Willamsburg.

Many apprenticeships failed because of the long-term commitment that is required. Also, people often entered the training program believing (as I did) that other woodworking skills like carpentry would easily translate into coopering skills that, in fact, does not. Marshall explains that coopering “requires equal parts brute strength and graceful manipulation of materials”, so “the physical demands of the trade can use you up.”

Master coopers James (on the far right) and George (in the far back) Pettengell at a traditional initiation ceremony for a cooper who completed the apprenticeship. Since 1971, only four journeymen including Marshall Scheetz completed the cooperage apprenticeship in Colonial Williamsburg. George retired in 2000 and James retired in 2016. Photo courtesy of Marshall Scheetz

With a surge of renewed appreciation and demand for liqueurs like whiskeys, wines and beers aged in wood barrels, there are currently many coopers working in the U.S. I remember reading a few years ago about a barrel shortage in the booming bourbon industry, so the cooper’s trade, in the form of barrels, is thriving. These industrial coopers assemble staves, drives hoops, and repair casks just as traditional coopers do, but Marshall is unique because while he can make and repair casks, he also creates smaller items like buckets, tankards and tubs that require an additional set of skills and tools.

Piggins at the cooperage studio of Marshall Scheetz in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Photo courtesy of Marshall Scheetz

While industrial coopers spend the majority of their time operating machinery, Marshall continues an ancient skill of cooperage using traditional tools taught by his master. As a scholar, teacher, and expert on cooperage history, it is important for Marshall to carry on what was taught to him.

Left: A hogshead sized barrel (63 gallons) just before trussing (bending of the staves to make the barrel shape). 
Right: Marshall heating the barrel staves to soften the wood so they will bend when the truss hoops are hammered down onto the splayed end of the cask.  The fire is contained inside a small metal basket called a cresset.

To make a cask, Marshall uses about two dozen tools. Most of the hand-tools that he uses are antiques from the 19th to early 20th centuries. They are oiled on a daily to weekly basis and grounded or sharpened only as needed on a traditional whet stone wheel with water.

Some of the cooper’s tools used by Marshall Scheetz
Photo courtesy of Marshall Scheetz

Marshall occasionally prepares raw materials from trees, but mostly, he uses quarter-sawn timber from mills so that he can focus his time on honing his coopering skills.  Manually shaping the wood for staves and other parts of the coopered vessel require cognitive skills that are more like sculpting than woodworking. To create a watertight vessel, he measures subtle details by touching the stave and scanning for corrections, and makes them liquid tight simply by the fit of the pieces.

＞＞Click to Watch Marshall demonstrating coopering at George Washington’s Mount Vernon＜＜

The resulting buckets, tubs and everyday containers are high-quality functional items and they carry the intrinsic beauty of the hand and its work.

A sea service bucket that has been tightened, and the bottom has been leveled off with the sun place tool.  The next step is to cut the bottom groove with the croze.  The two hoops on the bucket are heavy “ring hoops” used to build the container, but replaced after all the wood working is finished.  Photo courtesy of Marshall Scheetz

Marshall jokes that “hand-making products by yourself in the modern capitalistic society can be economic suicide”. But Marshall thinks of himself as a keeper of the cultural heritage of an ancient skill, which means that he is constantly researching about cooperage history. Some of the topics that he is currently studying include looking at the production points of Hagley Gunpowder Mills, the whaling industry of New England, and cooperage made by the Shakers in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

coopered bucket
Sea service buckets by Marshall Scheetz

Yanagi Muneyoshi, the Japanese founder of the Mingei movement said, “handwork, because it has nature behind it, has a way of fostering good life.” Marshall clearly has a fulfilling job with a purpose, and that certainly entails a “good life.”