Again this year I attended the annual Williamsburg program, Working Wood in the 18th C. It is always an inspiring event for me. I return home with new ideas and motivation for interesting projects. I also find it challenging to represent these projects in SketchUp. This time I’ve chosen the Wine Cooler that Brian Weldy and Jonathan Hallman demonstrated. Jonathan is a Cooper at Williamsburg and his skills were critical to making the Wine Cooler. Made in the late 1700’s, it incorporated barrel making technology with individual staves of complex compound angles. The picture below does not show the platform stand on which it sits.

I started with two shapes representing the ellipse axes and the angled or sloped depth.

 With the Circle Tool set at 20 sides, I placed a circle on the cross shapes and rotated slightly to have perpendicular sides at the quadrant junctions. Then with the Scale Tool, I re-shaped the circle into the elipse.

Using Follow Me, I created a quadrant of Staves.

The profile for the Follow Me included the groove shape for supporting the Bottom.

I copied and flipped the quadrants to assemble the enclosed staves.

Each Stave is made a component (6 in all), and dimensioned details can be illustrated for each. Here is the front view of just one stave. Surprisingly, Jonathan did not need any dimensions or detail drawings. By eye, he could do the beveling by hand and obtain perfect fit up. It was an impressive demonstration of skill.

 Here is the top view.

Here is the Side View. I doubt if I made that groove properly. I made it at an angle that would accommodate the Bottom square on. Probably these grooves are made perpendicular to the surface of the stave.

Also these staves were rounded and cupped by Jonathan using a drawknife and scorp like tool.

The cooler is held on a stand consisting of four angled legs and an elliptical platform. Brian showed the method for making and shaping the legs and mortising to the platform. Perhaps I’ll model that later.

Tim

Here is the video:

 Tim

@KillenWOOD

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