This is the kind of bucket that Laura Ingalls could have carried home from the spring. Crafted with hand tools just as coopers have done for hundreds of years, this watertight bucket is made with only three ingredients: pine wood, steel, and rope. It is bonded with no adhesive other than the steel bands and skilled artistry.
Our cooper, Steve Wenzel, handmade each bucket in public as a demonstration exhibit for a local historical society. The buckets he produced are authentically early American, and would be the perfect gear for civil war reenactments or other historical events. They hold about two gallons of water and are carried by a handmade rope handle Steve twisted from manilla yarn.
The Process:
Steve puts an entire day of work into creating a single bucket.
He starts with ten prepared "blanks" - narrow pieces of eastern white pine wood. (Steve uses white pine because the wood is lightweight and plentiful in our local area.) These blanks will eventually become the staves which form the bucket walls.
Steve begins by shaping each stave, using his shaving bench to hold it in place. The first step is to curve the "backing," or outside of each stave, using a draw knife. Then Steve curves the inside of each stave using a hollowing knife. Next, with his cooper's long jointer, Steve bevels and tapers the sides of the staves to an 18 degree angle so that they'll nestle into each other and create a circle, wider at the top and narrower at the bottom. Steve calculates these angles by eye, even though they must be perfect.
When the staves are finally ready, Steve puts them together inside the steel bands. With a compass plane, he smooths all the inside joints to create a perfect circle, and with a spokeshave he smooths the outside of the staves. Next, with a croze he cuts a groove close to the ends of the staves where the bottom must fit. The circular bottom he bevels with a heading knife until it can slip into the groove cut in the staves. It must be a very tight fit so that when water enters, the wood swells together without leaking.
The bucket must hold together without glue or nails, so it relies on the tightness of all these fits. By the time Steve is done, the bucket will be such a perfect whole that if the individual staves didn't vary in color you would barely be able to tell where one stave ends and another begins.
Ships free of charge to the continental USA via UPS.
Comes fully assembled.
If you live within a 2-hour radius of our warehouse located in the zip code 18343, we can arrange a personal delivery or offer a discount for customer pickup.
- Eastern white pine
- Steel bands
- Handmade manilla yarn rope
- Width: 10.75 inches
- Height: 12.5 inches
- Depth: 10.75 inches
Each bucket will vary significantly in color, depending on its age and the grain of the wood.
solid wood
Authentically early American
Our buckets are skillfully crafted using our own locally-harvested pine wood, steel bands, and our hand-twisted manilla yarn rope.
Crafted with skill
Like generations of coopers before him, Steve Wenzel puts an entire day of work into creating a single bucket.
Made to last
Invest in an heirloom piece. Every stave is perfectly joined and each strand of yarn lovingly braided to create a piece that endures. This bucket can be passed down and enjoyed for generations.
