CRAFTING STAVES: Steps and Expertise in Stave-Making
4 July 2024
Through this new series on the professions of cooperage, we will guide you through each step and skill of the trade, covering the roles of scaler, crosscutter, splitter, sawyer, edger, sorter, quality controller, and stacker of staves.
After the Charlois buyers select the oaks in the forest, the most important task in working oak into stave-quality wood is splitting the wood. This is an ancient skill, a traditional technique. These trades are not learned quickly; they are passed down from generation to generation, just as has been the case with the Charlois family since the mid-17th century.
A merrandier is someone with an infallible eye for reading the grain of the wood, splitting the log into quarters, removing the pith, sapwood, and bark to extract the straight-grain oak staves. This ensures a watertight barrel. The process follows a sequence of steps, each distinct from the other. From the yard where the logs are received to the stacking of staves in the open-air seasoning parks, several phases unfold: measuring, crosscutting, splitting, sawing, edging, sorting, quality control, and stacking. This is what cooperage is all about.
Cooperage is an art form; nothing is left to chance. Every step affects the next. It is a team effort. In the log yard, the first step is the selection. Each log is marked about every meter with spray paint. The crosscutter sets the pace by distributing the logs among the three splitting stations. The logs are cut to different lengths depending on the type of barrel to be produced. The splitters mark each log on the top with chalk, using wedges of varying sizes depending on the size of the log. The goal is to maximize the yield of staves from each quarter. The log is first split into two quarters, then four, always following the grain of the wood. Then comes sawing. The quarter is turned into a plank, with thicknesses ranging from 22 to 40 mm… The offcuts, or by-products, are sent to the central conveyor for a second life. The process moves from production to transformation. Removing the pith, sapwood, and bark, only the heartwood of the oak remains. The resulting slice of oak is the beginning of a stave, and this is the edging stage. The slice becomes a stave, always in the direction of the grain. One must stay alert. This is where the material yield is maximized, and it is done to the millimeter. In cooperage, as in nature, nothing is wasted, nothing is created, everything is transformed.
*Charlois valorizes 100% of its oak raw material.
Photography © Christophe Deschanel
