Hammer, Rivet, and Worm: How a Copper Still Was Built in 1860s New England
Alchemist G. G. Wilkins walks listeners through building a copper still in 1860s New England, covering raising the pot, riveting and soldering seams, the cap, and the worm. Guest Junior Vance, a retired Wilkes County bootleg runner, shares tales of a coppersmith who rejected a pot that 'sounded sad', a quilt-wrapped worm blessed by a preacher, and his childhood job mixing rye-flour paste. The episode closes with a listener question about hickory ash and the importance of making proper cuts.
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Full episode transcript
♦ Audible wax cylinder surface crackle, slow drip of clear distillate into a glass jar
♦ Barnaby the black bear grunting and chain clinking outside log cabin window
Wilkins: Barnaby, settle down, you great shaggy ham-hound. Sit. That is a sit, you smell like a wet Methodist and I've told you twice, the gentleman at the window is not a ham.
♪ 1860s parlor banjo and mountain fiddle theme with antique warmth
Wilkins: Good evening to every ear within reach of this wax cylinder, and a damp, dripping welcome to Radio Moonshine with Alchemist G. G. Wilkins, broadcasting from the log fortress of Fort Wilkins, upon the Suncook Valley Turnpike, which the surveyors call Route 28, in Pittsfield, Merrimack County, New Hampshire. I am your host, tooth-puller, blacksmith, inventor and general public nuisance, and tonight we go to the bench.
Announcer: A quick word, friends! A quick word! When you are ready for a still that heats clean, runs steady and lasts a lifetime, step up to the Flame-Flow copper still, United States Patent 10,561,960, built of heavy-gauge pure electrolytic copper. See it at moonshinestill.com. That is moonshinestill.com, and mind the bear!
Wilkins: Hammer, rivet and worm. Three words that built every honest still in New England, and I mean to show you each one, same as I'd show a green apprentice with a sore thumb and a worse attitude.
Wilkins: But first, the thing every gentleman asks me and every sheriff pretends not to. Why copper? Why not iron, which is cheap, or tin, which shines? I will tell you. Copper takes the heat of the fire and spreads it quick and even across the whole belly of the pot, so your mash does not sit scorching on one hot spot like a deputy on a stump. And copper does a second thing no other metal does so well. It reaches into the vapor and grabs the sulfur stink out of it. The old hands did not know the chemistry. They only knew that liquor run through copper tasted sweet and liquor run through iron tasted like a wet horse blanket. They were right, and the chemistry has since caught up with them, which is more than the law has done.
Wilkins: Now, the pot. You begin with a flat sheet of copper, and you hammer it into a bowl. We call that raising. You lay the sheet on a stake or a block, and you strike it in rings, working from the edge inward, and the metal flows and rises under the hammer like bread dough under a farmer's wife. But here is the trick, and it is the trick that separates a coppersmith from a man who merely owns a hammer. Copper work-hardens. The more you strike it the stiffer it gets, until it fights you, and if you keep hammering, it cracks, and your three days of labor sprays across the shop floor in two pieces. So you anneal. You heat it to a dull red, plunge it in water, and it goes soft as a Concord widow's heart at a funeral. Then you hammer again. Heat, quench, hammer. Heat, quench, hammer. I have done it a hundred times to a single pot.
♦ Heavy hammer ringing against copper on an anvil, steady rhythmic strikes
Wilkins: That is a hammer on sheet copper, listeners. Hear how it rings clear, like a church bell with bad news? When it goes dull and flat, the metal is hard and wants softening. A smith who cannot hear his metal is deaf in the one ear that matters.
Wilkins: Now the seams. A pot of any size is made of more than one piece, a body and a shoulder and a bottom, and where those pieces meet, you must join them tight enough to hold hot vapor and hot liquid both. We use rivets, soft copper rivets, set through overlapped edges and peened flat with the hammer until they sit tight as ticks. Then we seal the seam with a hard solder or a braze, a metal that melts at a high heat and flows into the joint and locks it. Now I will say this plain, and I will say it twice if I must. Never, never use lead solder in a still. Lead is a poison. It leaches into the spirit, and it will sicken a man or kill him, slow and quiet and without so much as an apology. I have seen what lead does, and I will not describe it at supper. Use a clean hard solder. Test every seam with water before a drop of mash goes near it.
Wilkins: A leaky seam is like a Suncook Valley preacher, friends. It sounds fine going in, and by the third hour everything is coming out the sides.
Wilkins: And a leak in a still is not a nuisance, it is a catastrophe with a fuse on it. Vapor of spirits is flammable, and when it leaks near the fire it does not drip politely onto the floor. It lights. I knew a man in Chichester who lost his eyebrows, his beard, and most of his dignity to a pinhole leak in a pot, and the last I heard he was still telling the story with no eyebrows to raise at the punch line.
Wilkins: Next, the cap, or the head of the still, the dome that rises on top and narrows toward the neck. That is raised and shaped the same way as the pot, only smaller and fussier, and you must fit the neck to the pot so the two sit together with a collar or a lute, a paste of rye flour and water that seals the joint. The shape matters. A tall neck lets the heavier vapors fall back and run down again, and that is called reflux, and it makes a cleaner spirit. A short stubby neck sends over everything, wheat and chaff alike, and the liquor shows it.
Wilkins: And then the worm. Ah, the worm. A long copper tube, coiled round and round like a sleeping snake, set in a tub of cold water. The vapor runs down through the coil, the cold water around it steals the heat, and the vapor turns back to liquid and drips out the bottom into your jar. You make it by wrapping a hot tube around a wooden form, a log, a post, a barrel stave if you are poor, and bending it gently while the metal is soft. I fill the tube with sand or pitch first so it will not kink flat on the bend. Kinks are the death of a worm. The vapor chokes, the pressure builds, and I need not tell this audience what a pot of boiling mash does when it has nowhere to go.
Wilkins: And mind the tub water. As the vapor gives up its heat, the water warms. Let it get hot and your worm stops condensing, and raw steam and vapor shoot out the end and across the room, and you will be wearing your supper. Change the water. Keep it cold. That is the whole sermon on worms.
♦ A coin struck once on anvil, bright steel-on-copper clang
Wilkins: That is the sound of an honest coin getting honest stamped, G. G. WILKINS, PITTSFIELD N.H., and I will thank anybody tempted to counterfeit it to remember the bear.
Wilkins: Now let us talk about what the books leave out, the scorching and the tinkering. A new still is a nervous creature. You do not simply fill it with mash and light the fire. First run is a cleaning run, water and a little vinegar, maybe a scrap charge, to wash out the flux and tallow and copper dust and the sweat of the man who built it. You throw that first run out. You throw it all out. It tastes like a penny that has been chewed by a blacksmith, and I should know.
Wilkins: Scorched mash is the other sin. Grain settles on the bottom, the fire finds it, and it cooks to a black crust that gives your whole run a burnt, bitter, ruined taste, and no amount of praying or cussing will lift it. The cure is a steady low fire, stirring when you can, and a pot with a good thick bottom. Heavy copper, I say. Do not skimp. And a double boiler, a bath of water around the pot, will save a careless man from himself, though it is slower, and the impatient hate slow.
Wilkins: And when the run goes proper, you make your cuts. Foreshots first, the first spoonfuls off the worm, and they carry methanol and sharp volatile stuff that will blind a man. You throw those away. Then the heads, harsh and solvent-smelling, and you throw those away too. Only then do you come to the hearts, the sweet middle of the run. Then the tails, oily and dull, set aside. A distiller who skips the cuts does not make liquor, he makes trouble. And let me add what I always add, and what the Revenue Bureau would add if they could ever spare the time from collecting. Making spirits for drinking without a federal permit is against the law of the United States, and everything I tell you tonight is for the history of the craft and for your education, and your education alone.
Wilkins: Barnaby has inspected every pot I ever built by sitting upon it, and not one has failed his weight test, which is more than I can say for the County Sheriff's chair.
♪ Short fiddle sting, rising and falling
Wilkins: Now, friends, I have a visitor tonight, and he has come a very long way from a place where they don't hammer copper so much as they hammer the accelerator. A retired runner out of North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, who drove modified Fords hauling illicit liquor from the Brushy Mountains down to Charlotte, and who is known up and down those hills as the fastest hand on a mountain road. Mr. Junior Vance, welcome to Fort Wilkins.
Junior: Well, thank you kindly, Doctor. I got to say, that's the strangest-lookin' log cabin I ever drove up to, and the biggest bear I ever seen chained to a window.
Wilkins: Barnaby, Mr. Vance, and he has already decided to like you, which is his way of saying he has not yet decided to eat you.
Junior: Comforting. I'll keep my hands where he can see 'em.
Wilkins: Mr. Vance, before we speak of roads and engines, I'd like to talk about the metal. Down home, how did a man know whether a pot was sound?
Junior: Old coppersmith in Wilkes County, Doctor, he'd tap the pot with one knuckle and listen to it ring. Went round every seam like a preacher thumpin' a melon at a church supper. I watched him turn down a pot one time because it sounded sad. Handed it right back to the man.
Wilkins: Sounded sad! A pot of melancholy temperament! I have pulled teeth on less evidence, sir. And was the old fellow right?
Junior: Dead right. Hairline crack hid under a rivet. That pot would've wept all over the fire the first run.
Wilkins: Now I am told you carried more than liquor in your day. Tell my listeners about the worm.
Junior: Ha! I once hauled a coiled copper worm in my back seat, wrapped in a quilt like a sleepin' baby. Preacher flagged me down at a crossroads, looked in the window, and offered to say a blessing over it.
Wilkins: A blessing over a worm! And did you let the good man proceed?
Junior: Let him go the whole prayer, Doctor. Figured I could use it. Then I drove off easy as eggs, 'cause my daddy always said, "If you hit the ditch at eighty, boy, make sure you duck below the steering wheel."
Wilkins: Your father was a philosopher, or a pessimist, and in my experience they are the same man. Now, Mr. Vance, every fellow starts somewhere. What was your first honest labor?
Junior: Twelve years old, Doctor, mixin' rye-flour paste for sealin' seams. Stirred that gummy mess all day, and I came home with it in my hair. The cat licked it out.
Wilkins: The cat licked it out! That is the very lute I spoke of earlier, listeners, and it appears it is fit for felines as well. I will wager that cat sealed her own seams for a week.
Junior: [laughs] She never did leak, I'll say that.
Wilkins: Now, Mr. Vance, a serious word for the listeners. In your day, there were boys running liquor through old car radiators for their condensers. What's the lesson there?
Junior: Oh, that's the worst thing a man can do, Doctor. Lead solder in the radiator. Folks went blind, folks died. I lost a cousin that way. Rule is plain: only clean copper, only clean solder, no salvaged junk. Anything else is slow poison with a pretty label.
Wilkins: A wise word and a sad one. You're a gentleman, Mr. Vance, and a craftsman, and you may keep your thumbs. Stay by the fire, and we'll be back after a word from the man in the checkered vest.
Junior: Much obliged, Doctor. And I'll keep an eye on that bear.
Wilkins: Do. He is watching you back.
♪ Brassy patent-medicine fanfare, slightly out of tune
Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, step right up, step right up! Are you tired of leaky seams, scorched mash, and a pot that sings sorry songs in the dead of night? Are you weary of tinkering with a rusty kettle and calling it a still? Then hear me out, for I bring you the Alchemist G. G. Wilkins Master Distilling Course, offered by Fort Wilkins Academy, and I tell you it is the finest eight-week education in the history of vapor!
Announcer: Learn the thermodynamics of vapor, the art of the cuts, the deep history of American spirits, the very hammer-and-rivet craft of building copper right! Over thirty hours of detailed modules, blueprints you can pin to your wall, and live question-and-answer sessions with master distillers, coppersmiths and historians! Heavy-gauge, pure electrolytic copper, the same stuff Dr. Wilkins himself hammers at his own anvil! Come see the showroom at Fort Wilkins, right on Route 28 in Pittsfield, New Hampshire, and bring a hearty appetite for knowledge!
Announcer: Imagine it, friends! Eight weeks from now, you will know the difference between a foreshot and a heart as surely as you know your own name! The entire course is only one hundred ninety-nine dollars, and I say that is cheaper than a lawyer, quieter than a sheriff, and far more useful than either! Enroll today at fortwilkins.com/course, that is fortwilkins.com/course, or learn more at moonshinestill.com/course! Do not delay, do not dither, do not let another batch scorch! Fortwilkins.com/course! Reserve your seat before the bear eats the enrollment desk!
♪ Fiddle and banjo sting, returning to theme
Wilkins: And we are back at Fort Wilkins, Mr. Vance still among us and still alive, which I count a credit to Barnaby's manners. Now friends, the bench lesson is done and the mailbag is open. We have a voicemail from the great state of North Carolina, from Wilkesboro itself. Let us hear it.
♦ Wax cylinder surface crackle, a brief hiss, a click as the tape begins
Cletus: Alchemist, my uncle swears old-timers used to throw hickory ashes or red oak shavings into the thump keg to clean out bad heads. Is there any truth to that, or was he just making swamp medicine?
♦ Wax cylinder crackle fades
Wilkins: Cletus Miller, they call you Rabbit, and you have asked a question worth a good answer. Your uncle is right, and he is wrong, and the proof of both is on the same table. Hickory ash and oak charcoal are hardwood, and hardwood char can grab onto some of the harsh, oily compounds in a spirit. That much is true, and the old hands knew it by taste before any professor wrote it down.
Wilkins: But here is the rub, Cletus. Throwing ashes into a boiling charge does not make a bad head safe. It does not pull methanol out of a foreshot. Methanol is not shy, it is not taken in by ash, and it will blind a man as fast as a thrown brick. The only cure for a bad head is the cut. Throw out the foreshots. Throw out the heads. Keep the hearts. That is the lesson, and no scoop of hickory dust substitutes for it.
Wilkins: A man who thumps his keg with hickory ashes and calls it medicine is the same man who calls his wife's cooking rustic, Cletus. Both mean well and neither should be trusted with your supper. Your uncle is not making swamp medicine, but he is making hope, and hope is a poor still. Run your cuts clean, filter your finished spirit through a bed of clean charcoal if you must, and let the ash stay in the stove where it belongs.
Wilkins: Mr. Vance, did your people in Wilkes County use ash and shavings?
Junior: Some did, Doctor. Mostly for show, I always figured. Make a man feel he'd done somethin'. But the good runners, they cut proper and threw the front end to the hogs. And the hogs got awful friendly.
Wilkins: The hogs survived, I trust.
Junior: Mostly. One went to the Baptist church, if you can believe it.
Wilkins: [laughs] I believe it. Cletus, thank you for the question, and thank you for the shout out to Wilkesboro. Barnaby sends his regards and a threat.
♦ A steel punch clangs on a copper coin, one sharp strike
Wilkins: That is another honest stamp, G. G. WILKINS, PITTSFIELD N.H., for the post and the postcard. Keep them coming, listeners, and I'll keep answering.
Announcer: A quick word before we part! The Flame-Flow still, United States Patent 10,561,960, heavy-gauge pure electrolytic copper and built to be passed to your grandchildren. Visit moonshinestill.com, and ask for the Doctor by name!
Wilkins: Friends, that is the bench. Hammer to raise the pot, rivet to hold the seam, solder clean and never lead, a cap with a tall neck, and a worm coiled long and cold. Watch for leaks, watch for scorch, watch your fire, and cut your run honest. Copper does not forgive carelessness, but it rewards patience better than any banker I have met.
Wilkins: And if you want to learn the whole craft, from the thermodynamics of vapor to the history of American spirits, sit down with my Master Distilling Course at fortwilkins.com/course. Eight weeks, thirty hours, blueprints and live questions, from Fort Wilkins Academy, one hundred ninety-nine dollars. Do it before the bear signs up and ruins the curve.
Wilkins: Mr. Vance, thank you for the company and the lies, I mean the stories.
Junior: My pleasure, Doctor. And I'll thank you to remember the chains on that bear are good.
Wilkins: They are very good, and I have never once tested them with my own leg. Goodnight, Mr. Vance.
Wilkins: Keep your copper clean, your cuts honest, and your fire low. Goodnight from Fort Wilkins.
♦ Bear grunt and final drip into jar
♪ Parlor banjo and fiddle theme fades out with wax cylinder crackle