History: Early Photographs

Staves were used to make wooden barrels. They were strips of shaped wood that were set edge to edge to form the side/wall of a barrel. Elm wood was cut in strips, and placed in boiling water. After soaking, the stripes were cut by a special planer and bent/bowed to conform to the shape of a barrel. The staves ends were "lapped" to make the barrel's sides the proper length. They were later dried to the proper "wetness" and assembled into a barrel.
The large work forces shows a lot of labor went into barrel manufacturing.
The following is from the back of the Stave Factory photo. The author is unknown:
"This is a picture of the crew and stave wagon at the west side of the building. Plank were sawed from elm logs and placed edgewise in a long vat of boiling water. They were separated from one another by vertical iron rods. After a certain period of soaking, a man using a metal hook fastened to a long wooden handle removed the plank from the vat. A man at another machine placed the plank flat side down on a part of the machine that operated in a rocking motion, which forced the plank against a stationary knife slicing a strip, the length of the plank. The strips were all the same width and to conform to the shape of a barrel one side was required to be thinner than the other. This was done by running it through a machine called a planer. After this process, the strips were put on a machine called a lapper. The lapper cut one end of the strip off straight and gave a slight taper to the other end This was the part in the finished hoop that was lapped over the other end. From there it went to hot water tanks again and from there they were taken out and put through a machine that coiled them into a circle. After 7 or 8 hoops were finished they formed a flat bundle. The end of the last hoop was nailed and after inspection the bundles were hauled out where they were stacked in a large circle. Every other row contained one less bundle. The bundles were arranged in this way to make the stack secure.
"Not shown in the picture was the, stave production. Logs were sawed into sections stave length. These were then sawed into sections end to end, placed into bins into whic4 steam was piped. Stave bolts did not require soaking in hot water because they were not required to be bent, only to be softened for the shaving process which was similar to the cutting machine that made the hoop strips. Barrel staves varied in width because the bolts varied in size. I loaded staves during summer vacation for 5 cent per hour."

Photo Credit: Wakarusa Public Library
Internet Source: wakarusa.org
Webmaster: Leland M. Haines, Goshen, IN.