Barrels & Buckets: Projects for makers of wooden containers using stave-based constructions like buckets and barrels. Paperback – December 8, 2025

The making of curved-sided objects from wood provides some particular challenges for the wood worker. Historically, casks, or barrels, made for the storage and transport of liquids (mainly) were the basis for the development of Cooperage skills. While these containers are still in common use in the making of alcoholic beverages, the skills required to make the barrels are gradually being lost.The book provides a challenge and stimulation for woodworkers to use their skills to build cask-based items using some of the traditional cooperage techniques but supplemented with some more modern and readily available wood machining tools. In particular, the use of the CNC Router is demonstrated where there are some more challenging machining tasks.The reader is provided with an introduction to the mathematics of cask design and the describing the precise shapes of the required staves. There is then a presentation of how these machining operations can be performed using commonly available wood workshop tools with some emphasis on capabilities of the CNC router. Finally, the book provides a detailed presentation of a number of projects involving the application of stave-based constructions. Sufficient detail is provided to describe the design and making steps, and to stimulate the reader to develop their own projects Read more