Pickles were also shipped in barrels back in the 1800s and perhaps later. Railroad spikes, too, as someone mentioned. There were different sizes of barrels according to what they were meant to contain.
Vancouver and Victoria, as pacific ports located near abundant forests, had considerable barrel-making facilities – often with railroad tracks on one side and port facilities on the other. In this case, most were for shipping ‘stuff’ not beer. Check out http://www.sweeneycooperage.ca/ for a ton of info and photos and some video.
Coopers didn’t need shops as large as one might imagine because of two main points: their raw materials were very compact for storage, even when wood was shaped into staves (very easily stacked); and once the barrels were made they went out the door pretty fast. That’s why a large cooperage by quantity of barrels made would fit in a smaller facility, This also helped large brewers keep cooperages in-house for efficiency’s sake.
The raw materials were pretty simple: wood and banding (either metal usually arriving on reels, or wood). Soaking or steaming wood for stave fabrication could take up space, but was considered more desirable than shaping staves by ‘scooping’ and fairing the curves with a shaving tool since all that did was waste wood and didn’t improve the quality of the stave. A high-volume cooperage would have plenty of wood shavings on hand anyway, from tapering the stave ends.
I don’t have any information on this, but it might be an interesting modeling feature: distilleries were often known for charring the insides of their barrels as part of the seasoning, aging and flavoring for their distilled products. Dunno how they charred large numbers of new barrels, but I bet it could be an interesting scene, especially if some newbie in the plant let the charring get a bit out of hand. . .
Personally I’d prefer to be the taster than the cooper.
Hi. We in Ontario, Canada have a company that produces a barrel factory. It is a kit that makes up to a very nice display. E-mail Address(es):
joe@fullsteamahead.ca
Hope this helps.