driving the lane - the hoop driver

When a cooper makes a barrel the staves are roughly lined up in a circle and the hoops are loosely arranged around them. The hoops are then hammered into place with ... wait for it ... with a hoop driver. There are a lot of different styles that evolved over the years, this is a hybrid of a few.  This was forged from a chunk of mystery metal laying around the shop - and I paid for it.  The metal must have had an inclusion in the grains and when I was just finishing the edge, the corner cracked off of one edge.  Doesn't impact the usefulness, just resulted in a new litany of vulgarities bouncing off the forge walls.  A little clean up and thing were back on track.  

Some backstory: when I was in elementary school, first and second grade at St. Theodores, within a few feet of the playground fence was the dark door of a cooperage. Lots of smoke, fire and sparks. Clearly magical stuff was going on. The guys would come out for lunch, drenched in sweat, reeking of smoky iron and wood. A couple of us would sit on the swings and, hearing words we had never heard, wondered at what country they were from.  Upon inquiring after our teachers, the nuns had us eat lunch inside for the rest of the school year.