doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com What in blazes is this

Found in my dear departed mother's garage with her needlepoint an VHS tapes of the grandkids

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Handle is about 4.5 feet

Butter churn plunger?

pushes the powder bags into a muzzle loaded cannon...or to tamp the cabbage down in the sauerkraut barrel. Depending on the order you can get damp powder or odd tasting kraut.

Give liverwort a cigar. It's a kraut tamper. My Grandfather had one, but he used large ceramic crocks rather than wooden barrels for sauerkraut. After the shredded cabbage was tamped down, a round wooden lid that fit inside the crock was placed on top of the cabbage, and a stone weight was put on top of that to keep it all pressed down below the surface of the liquid as it fermented. The wooden barrels were for wine.

That's how my grandfather also did it, the old crocks are worth a ton today

bill

I think I am an old crock... where do I go to cash in?

Cracked, crocks have very little value at cash in time. And we are all a little cracked sometimes.

I have several crocks from my family that were used until my mothers generation. Come to think of it she made pickles in them when I was little. Several times I've had people tell me that they are worth big money but they never seem to open up their wallets to show me how much.

A new 5 gal stoneware crock for Sauerkraut is about 40 bucks.
They aren't rare or expensive. And a cracked "old timey" crock is a stinky accident waiting to happen when you least want it to.

I use plastic pails for pickles and sauerkraut. Built in handles, and a snap on lid. Get them at the paint store.

It may very well be a sauerkraut tamper, but I used one of these that was hand carved from a tree, cyprus I believe, by my great grandfather to stand on a wagon and drive in 4x4 oak posts to string wire on the top for about 20 acres of concord grape vines when I was about 15 years old. The handle on the one I used was about twice to maybe three times as big around as this one. A handful, and no, it is not a fond memory. Of course, the wine me and my fried made, sold and drank more than made up for the hard work!!! My grandfather had me use this so as not to split the oak posts. It worked.

That's a cool story, Perry, and great memories. I'll bet you were "hard to handle" after you finished 20 acres of post driving. Are the grapevines still producing?

That is cypress, and it is amazing wood, and trees. The highest use of cypress trees, IMO, is to backdrop big fat mallards circling down to drop into the Judas birds, just after daylight on a crisp December morning. There are fewer and fewer stands of ancient cypress left in my part of the country. The wood is highly sought after, and huge blocks of it are cut every time it gets dry enough for the loggers to get down in the deep swamps. It's heartbreaking.

My best, SRH