THE USES OF WOOD 



WOOD USED IN THE COOPERAGE INDUSTRY 



BY HU MAXWELL 



Editor's Note:— This is the thirteenth in a series of important and very valuable articles by Mr. Maxwell on wood and its 

 uses. The series will thoroughly cover the various phases of the subject, from the beginnings in the forest through the processes 

 of logging, lumbering, transportation and milling, considering in detail the whole field of the utilization and manufacture of wood. 



THE cooperage industry includes the manufacture of 

 barrels, kegs, staves, heading, hoops, and other 

 articles made of staves. 

 The growth or decline of this industry from year to 

 year cannot be conveniently shown, because the govern- 

 ment compiles statistics only every five or ten years, and 

 the cooperage 

 a s s o c i ations 

 have never 

 brought figures 

 together except 

 in the most 

 superficial way. 

 It is known, 

 however, that 

 the cooperage 

 industry is 

 fairly stable 

 and does not 

 vary much 

 from year to 

 year. The 

 greatest influ- 

 ence recently 

 has been the 

 p r o h i b i tion 

 movement 

 which has 

 t h r eatened to 

 lessen the de- 

 mand for bar- 

 rels for spirit- 

 uous liquors. 

 Such barrels 

 const itute a 

 rather small 

 part of the 

 cooperage in- 

 dustry as a 

 whole, and the 

 diminution in the output of whiskey barrels will not 

 greatly lessen the cooperage production in the country. 

 Similar changes have taken place before in the cooper- 

 age business, as in the substitution of bags for barrels 

 for cement, sugar, and flour; and pipelines and tankcars 

 in place of barrels in the transportation of oil. In spite 

 of such changes and fluctuations, the cooperage business 

 has moved steadily on. What has been lost in one direc- 

 tion has been made up in another. 



A MODERN WINE CELLAR 



This wine storage room is underground at the Cresta Blanca Winery, Livermore, California. A peculiar 

 and very high-class of cooperage is used, the heads of the casks being oval instead of circular. The 

 underground tunnel assures an even temperature and contributes to the perfection of the wine. Photo- 

 graph by courtesy of the California Grape Protective Association, San Francisco. 



There are two kinds of cooperage, commonly dis- 

 tinguished as "tight" and "slack." Tight vessels are 

 intended for liquids ; slack for dry articles. Classes and 

 grades come between the two extremes. The barrel that 

 carries alcoholic liquors is considered the highest class of 

 tight cooperage, while the vegetable barrel is typical of 



slack contain- 

 ers. The slack 

 barrel end of 

 the business is 

 the larger, 

 judged by 

 quantity of 

 wood required 

 in manufactur- 

 ing the prod- 

 uct ; but tight 

 barrels demand 

 a much higher 

 grade of wood. 

 The value of 

 the slack stock 

 used in the 

 country is 

 nearly fifty 

 per cent more 

 than the value 

 of the tight 

 material. Near- 

 ly any wood is 

 s u i t a ble for 

 some kind of 

 slack cooper- 

 age, but only a 

 few are ser- 

 v i c e able for 

 tight. 



A 1 1 cooper- 

 age whet her 

 tight or slack 

 is made up of three parts, the staves, the heading, and 

 the hoops. No barrel is constructed without all three of 

 these, though certain patterns of veneer drums combine 

 the staves and the hoops in the wooden sheet that forms 

 the body of the vessel. No well defined line of demarka- 

 tion separates the barrel from the hamper or stave basket, 

 and sometimes it is not easy to say which is which. The 

 manufacturing of the three parts often constitutes three 

 separate industries, a mill or factory confining itself to 



UN 



