WOOD PIPE FOR CONVEYING IRRIGATION WATER. 3 
the use of wood pipe began about 1880 with the construction, ac- 
cording to new ideas, of what has come to be known as continuous 
stave pipe. The construction of continuous stave pipe was soon fol- 
lowed by the manufacture of stave pipe in sections and improved 
bore pipe, both of which have come to be known as machine-banded 
pipe. Continuous stave pipe and machine-banded pipe are both very 
extensively manufactured and used at the present time. These two 
types of pipe will be considered in this bulletin. 
CONTINUOUS STAVE PIPE. 
This type of pipe is a development of the old stave penstocks, 
many of which were built in the New England States, New York, 
and Eastern Canada from 1850 to 1870.1. These were usually made 
in tapered sections, banded with flat iron bands. The sections were 
joined by inserting the small end of one a few inches into the large 
end of another. Such joints were faulty, which fact led to building 
pipe in which the ends of staves butted together, thus forming con- 
tinuous stave pipe. This form of construction appears to have been 
first used in 1874.2 The first extensive use, however, followed the 
- construction of pipes designed and built by C. P. Allen, at Denver, 
Colo., about 1884. 
Except in minor details, continuous stave pipe of the present day 
is the same as that built by Mr. Allen in the early eighties. It is 
essentially pipe built continuously in place, of staves having radial 
edges and faces milled to form arcs of concentric circles, the inner 
circle being of radius equal to half the nominal diameter of the pipe. 
The staves are held together by round steel bands secured by shoes 
and nuts, and the butt joints are made tight by the insertion of thin 
steel clips which fit into saw kerfs across the ends of the staves. 
This form of construction is illustrated in Plate I. 
ADAPTABILITY AND USE OF CONTINUOUS STAVE PIPE. 
Continuous stave pipe is adapted to the usual service required in 
conveying water long distances for municipal, power, irrigation, 
mining, or manufacturing purposes. It has a particularly wide > 
field of usefulness throughout the West because of the low cost and 
ease with which the material for its construction can be procured, 
transported, and assembled in regions remote from railroads and diffi- 
cult of access, where the expense of cast iron or other kinds of pipe 
commonly used in the East would in many instances prohibit their 
use. | 
In addition to its low first cost, experience has shown that wood 
pipe has other advantages as compared to cast-iron or steel pipe. It 
1U. S. Geol. Survey, Water Supply and Irrig. Paper 43, p. 63. 
2Trans. Amer, Soc. Civ. Bngin. (1877), p. 69. 
