Right then, let’s talk about the Cooper. Not the awesome little car from “The Italian Job”, mind you, but a proper tradesman: one who expertly assembled casks, barrels, vats, and any other vessel made of wooden staves. Coopers were (in fact still are) masters of their craft. Without a good Cooper, much of the world’s trade, and certainly its best drinks, wouldn’t have gone anywhere.
It’s easy to see an old barrel and assume it’s just a rustic wooden tub, as opposed to a marvel of engineering. It’s built entirely without glue, relying only on perfect joinery and tension to hold hundreds of gallons of liquid. Makes most modern equivalents look crap.
A Trade Rooted in History
Coopering goes back practically to when “God was a lad”. The term Cooper coming from the Middle Dutch kūper, but the actual craft is thousands of years old. Evidence has been found of simple crude barrels Circa 5000 BC in the Middle East.
However, the real point of change came from the Romans where the barrel evolved to become the practical, rolling vessel we know. Their Coopers, the cuparii, began phasing out the old wooden or rope bindings and started using iron hoops, meaning the barrels were then strong enough to survive the rough and tumble of long-distance transport, shifting wine, olive oil, and more across their vast empire.
When the Roman Empire faded, the need for robust shipping containers didn’t. During the Medieval period, the barrel confirmed its place as the standard unit of volume and transport. Here in the UK and Europe, the Coopers formed powerful guilds. These weren’t just social clubs; they were serious bodies that laid down the law on quality, pricing, and training. If you were a Cooper in London, York, or Edinburgh, you were considered an indispensable artisan, and they knew their worth!
Three Kinds of Cooperage
Now then, Coopering isn’t just one thing. It’s traditionally broken down into three different specialities, depending on what you’re trying to keep inside the wood:
- White Coopering: This was the household stuff. Think pails, tubs, butter churns, and water buckets. Simple, open-topped vessels for things that didn’t need to hold pressure or roll down a hill.
- Dry (or Slack) Coopering: These casks were for dry goods: flour, tobacco, dried fish, salt, and maybe some cheap gunpowder. They didn’t need to be perfectly watertight, just structurally sound enough to keep the contents dry and safe.
- Wet (or Tight) Coopering: This is the big league, the real craft. These are the watertight casks for liquids: wine, beer, spirits, or oil. This demanded the most skill, as the margin for error was tiny. When you think of a Cooper, this is usually the craft you picture. They were the ones supplying the booming brewing industry, whether it was the stout houses of Dublin or the breweries right here in Yorkshire.
The distinction matters because it dictates the level of precision needed and, crucially, the tools used.
The Craft of Making a Perfect Barrel
If you’ve ever tried to build something out of wood and get a dovetail joint exactly right, you’ll appreciate the sheer skill involved in Coopering. They’re building a complex, curved object that has to withstand internal pressure and external rough handling, all while being perfectly sealed. The apprenticeships weren’t short either; five to seven years was the norm. It had to be, because you appreciate the challenge is getting a vessel to seal without using any kind of glue.
This sealing relies entirely on the meticulous shaping of the staves. These long, narrow slats of wood, usually oak (prized for its strength and the flavour it gives to spirits), need to be cut so that the edge of one stave fits against the edge of the next at a precise angle. Some master Coopers claimed they were working to tolerances of 1/2000th of an inch (be better if it was spot on eh!). Makes for a good story, but either way, that’s intense accuracy for a hand tool trade.
The process was long-winded, involving maybe thirty specialised tools. Here’s the gist:
- Shaping the Wood: Tools like the Cooper’s side axe were used for the initial rough shaping. Then came the draw knives, or spokeshaves as they might be better known to some, but often much bigger: a rounded hollowing knife for the concave (inside) curvature and a flat backing knife for the convex (outside) curve.
- Raising the Barrel: Once the staves were shaped, they were arranged in a circle, held together with temporary hoops, and then the serious business started. The wood had to be softened by using a flaming brazier inside the circle or steam to make it pliable. The Cooper then used ropes and windlasses to pull the open end closed, forcing the straight staves into that recognisable bulge, or bilge.
Securing the Heads: After the body was shaped and secured with its permanent iron hoops, the final piece of the puzzle was fitting the heads—the top and bottom. And this is where the sheer precision of the hand plane comes in.
The Topping Plane
In wet Coopering, the greatest risk is a leak where the head meets the body of the barrel. It’s asolutely critical. To prevent this, the ends of the assembled staves need to be perfectly flat before the final groove for the head can be cut.
This is the job of one of the trade’s most specialised and fascinating tools: the Cooper’s Topping Plane, sometimes called a Sun Plane.
Think of the barrel as a cylinder on its side with the rough ends of all those individual staves sticking out. You could try and knock them back with a hand adze first, especially on tough oak, but that won’t give you the super-flat surface needed.
The Topping Plane is much like a jack plane but curved in order to work across the top of the staves without tilting. It slides around the entire edge, shaving the ends of all the staves down to a perfectly flat and level surface. It’s the final leveling pass. If this surface isn’t absolutely true, then the next step won’t work, and the barrel will leak. Simple as that.
Once that perfectly levelled surface is achieved, a Cooper would use a special tool, the croze, to cut a tight groove (also called the croze) around the interior of the staves. This recess houses the barrel top, precisely securing it to create a tight seal and prevent seepage. But that can’t happen until the Topping Plane has done it’s job, trimming the edges of the staves to be accurate and flat so the croze can function effectively.
If it piques your interest, you may be pleased to know I have one for sale: a genuine Cooper’s Topping Plane. A proper piece of history. See here in the shop.
British Coopering: More Than Just Guinness
While the romantic notion of Coopering often heads straight to bourbon in America or wine in France, the UK trade was massive and influential. The brewing industry, particularly the production of Ale and Porter, powered demand for tight Cooperage throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.
In major cities like London, Liverpool, and especially the brewing heartlands of the Midlands and Yorkshire, Coopers were a powerful force. They weren’t just fixing things; they were making thousands of new vessels every year. They even had their own slang, and a good sense of humour with it. If you’re bending heavy oak staves and dealing with hot steam all day, you need a bit of a laugh and maybe a flagon or two.
The legacy here may be best related to the Navy and the merchant fleet. British naval Coopers were absolutely vital. They built the huge vats and barrels needed to carry water, beer, rum, and salted provisions for long voyages. A leaky cask on a ship was a disaster, so the Navy only accepted the very best work. This constant, high-stakes demand kept the British Coopering trade keen and ensured its longevity.
If you want to delve deeper into the tools that underpinned trades like this, I can highly recommend The Handplane Book. It covers everything from the humble smoothing plane to these much more specialised beauties, like the Cooper’s planes. It’s a fantastic resource for any serious tool collector or woodworker, and helps you appreciate just how varied and specific the plane family really is. You can find the book here if it’s of interest. (as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases).
The Enduring Trade
Like many traditional crafts, Coopering took a serious hit after the Industrial Revolution. Machines could shape wood faster, and later, cheaper metal and plastic containers became the norm. Guinness, for example, started swapping out wooden casks for aluminium kegs in 1946, and the last wooden cask was filled in March 1963. A sign of the times!
But the craft has far from gone away, and do you want to know why? Flavour.
You simply can’t replicate the interaction between wood and liquid in a metal or plastic container. The aging process in oak barrels is fundamentally essential to the final product of many fine beverages. Think Scotch whisky, which must, by law, be stored in an oak cask for a minimum of three years and one day. Or fine wine, where the barrel adds complex tannins and aeration. The wood isn’t just a vessel; it becomes an ingredient.
So, while the industry might be smaller, it’s thriving in quality. Master Coopers today still rely on the timeless effectiveness of traditional tools. They understand that for the absolute best result, the ancient methods of meticulous hand-shaping and precision joinery remain superior.
It’s a great reminder that sometimes, the old way really is the best way (who here is gonna argue with that?). And when you pick up a tool like the Topping Plane, you’re not just holding a piece of wood and iron; you’re holding a thread to a craft that’s kept empires running and still keeps the world supplied with the finest drams. Not bad for a bit of joinery, is it?
Cheers!
