The Cooper's Art

The ancient art of barrel-making is deceptively simple and elegant in its solution to the problem of water containment. Its origin is as lost in history as the discovery of the wheel or the invention of the arch (to which it is related). The more water there is in the tank, the more pressure there is on each stave. But the outward pressure of the water is converted to lateral pressure, which compresses the staves to each other and makes the tank less likely to leak. So the more water there is in the tank, the more leak-proof it becomes.

The rods on a Gordon & Grant tub are 3/8" hot-rolled round steel...but the rods actually support surprisingly little of the weight of the water.

The design of the barrel was perfected in antiquity. Each stave must be cut to precise angles for a perfect fit. Modern attempts to speed up production by the use of tongue-and-groove staves (which can be more easily mass-produced) have not been notably successful; the pressures of the tub are concentrated on the thin and fragile "tongue" part of the tongue-and-groove, rather than being spread evenly on the entire bearing edge of the stave.

Evenly-distributed pressures are most critical in oval tubs. In a, true-oval tub, the angle cut on each stave must be different. The elliptical oval is much easier to make it is also not nearly as strong and leak-proof as the true oval. Gordon and Grant make the only true oval tank available today.

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