This coopering is dead DEAD easy. It LOOKS really hard and incredibly delicate with the finest parts.. fiddly making...

BUT heres a secret!....

It isn't! One can literally use firewood. The pieces are split off the log using a "froe", cut roughly to length, each pieces are sides cleaned up with a plane, then glued into a round and using string to hold it in place while it dries.

Then the inside and outsides are shaped with the various custom make kanna (planes) in the picture above (these are not mine!). One works like a stone mason making a statue.... the bits that arent a "'barrel" are planed off.

The bottom and lips are trickier.

But I need a source for metal hoops. Thats proved challenging. There are many cheap ones for Dream Catchers (by the gods I hate those things) but their ends are induction welded and finish is terrible.

....

I thought/felt I was at the final decision stage, but this has given me a different thought. I felt rather than make one super-dooper plane, that Id document the process of making a series of odd utility-scale planes. Something the average grunt can make without super-dooper machinery or elite skills. A practical and pleasing set of objects fit to a task.

....

Hmmmm..... which direction.....