This essay contains information on buckets. It does not contain information on non-bucket items.

An Essay on Buckets

by Company’s Sergeant Major (CSM)
Nigel Rivvens Surrey Stonehouse.
(4th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry)

Buckets are hollow containers distinguished from bins by their cylindrical shape. Bins, generally, are square or cubical. Pots, while cylindrical, have a side-mounted singular projecting prop handle while a bucket is usually noted by its double mounted 180 arc wire frame handle. Buckets may be constructed from any number of materials including, but not limited to, wood, plastic, metal or porcelain. They may or may not have a pouring lip perforation in the rim, located perpendicular to the handle mountings.

There may be containers, similar in design to what we have above described as buckets, but with surfaces punctuated by varied perforations. These are not buckets, but rather are strainers, for the primary function of a bucket is to contain water or another liquid. Thus may a bucket aid in the transport of liquids. Due to the non-solid surface, a strainer would be ineffective in holding or transporting fluids as the fluid would have a tendency to drain fromthe holes and fall toward the ground. A bucket, with its constant surface, avoids this problem.

Buckets are used by all manner of gentlemen, for instance, those who work for the Fire Department. Their vocational duties are so entwined with buckets that these firefellows are sometimes called a “Bucket Brigade.” Nomads of Arabia use wooden buckets to draw up life-giving water from isolated desert oases. Custodians of many buildings and structures the world over use buckets to hold their frothy, soap-strewn waters. Buckets are cool.