Manufacture of Buckets by Steam machinery.

Bruce Herald, Volume VIII, Issue 714, 2 July 1875, Page 3

Manufacture of Buckets by Steam machinery.

No great length of time has elapsed since the coopering of a cask, tub, or pail was a serious matter, and not to be set about without due deliberation, a proper sense of responsibility, and an authenticated apprenticeship. The Americans were among the first to introduce a change in this trade, which they specially adapted to the manufacture of wooden pails or buckets for household use. By the aid of suitable machinery, supplemented by intelligent, although by no means specially trained, hand labor, our cousins succeeded in producing light, elegant, cheap, and useful vessels, which speedily superseded the clumsy combinations of wood arid iron of the olden time. It is true that native metallic buckets for a time disputed inch by inch the ascendancy of the American intruders, but the superiority 'of the Utter, more particularly in the essential matter of cheapness, soon distanced competition, till at length they remained masters of the field. In the midst of this alarming crisis, Mr John Stewart, of Washington- street, Glasgow, came to the rescue, and by adapting a portion of his well-known steam cooperage to the production of wooden pails on the American system, succeeded not only in coaxing back the trade to the Clyde, but in producing an improved article at even a lower figure. . His process is as speedy as it is efficient and interesting. The staves, prepared by machinery from a light tough wood, grooved on one side and tongued on the other, are placed loosely in position, and surrounded by two stont iron rings, A few blows from a hammer presently drive the wedge like staves together, when the embryo bucket is slipped into the revolving cylinder of a special lathe, and the inside smoothly turned in less time than it takes to describe the operation. Removed a yard or two, it is now transferred to the revolving truncated cone of a similar machine, when the outside is turned — with the exception of the portions covered by the iron rings. It is theD released for a brief period, two permanent hoops replacing the rings, when it receives its final polish on the lathe, and the groove to retain the bottom cut, which' is fitted in. Two iron ears are next attached, followed by the handle, when a few revolutions under the brush, pf the painter completes the process. A man a boy are capable of completing about twenty dozen

per ,day,jand we are told that one quality of the finished article can be sold in quantity at as low a price as thirteen shillings for twelve. It need only be added that at this cooperage every variety of work is daily to be seen in full operation, from the making of the tiniest gunpowder keg to the building of the mightiest brewer's tun. Any valetudinarian in search of a moral stimulant, united to a sensation of 'personal risk, will achieve his desire here in watching the numerous circular saws instantaneously cleaving their way through acres of timber, in gracefully dodging the chips as they fly from the turning lathes, or in getting as near as maybe consistent with safety to the gigantic steam planes, which Heem capable of shaving away the side of a house. — ' British Trade Journal.'