Replacing Koch, Jessup, or Hardwood Line Barrels with Eagle: What You Need Before You Quote

Why Legacy Replacement Is Different

If you're running barrels from Koch, Jessup, Hardwood Line, or another manufacturer that's no longer producing equipment for your line, replacement is rarely a straightforward swap. The original equipment often dates from the 1980s or 1990s. The original manufacturer may no longer exist or may have stopped supporting the product. Source drawings are usually not available — they're either in a filing cabinet nobody can find, or they were never given to the customer. Spare parts inventories are running down.

The dimensional measurement work itself is the same as on any replacement project — see How to Spec a Replacement Barrel for the field checklist. This article focuses on what is specific to legacy/competitor replacement: the manufacturer-specific spec patterns Eagle has documented, the gotchas that show up only on legacy equipment, and the reverse-engineering options when no drawings exist.

Koch Barrels — Common Patterns

Koch barrels are often identifiable by the door design — a hinged "double-door overlap" pattern with stainless steel clips, similar to Eagle's standard but with slightly different clip geometry. The barrel body material on most Koch installations is standard polypropylene (PP), not PE1000. Common sizes seen in the field include 18×36, 18×60, and 20×48 (inches).

The main gear is usually steel with 72 or 80 teeth at 21.5" or 24" outer diameter. Bearing through-holes are typically 24mm — fine for PVC 70mm² danglers but undersized for PUR 120mm² cable. If you're upgrading from PVC to PUR, the bearing through-holes need to be bored out to 30mm before installation. That's routine work but should be quoted alongside the barrels.

Jessup Barrels — Common Patterns

Jessup barrels tend to be larger than Koch — many North American Jessup installations are 18×80 or 24×60. The door is often a "twin LJ" twin-door configuration that opens like a clamshell rather than the overlap pattern Koch used. Body material is variable; some Jessup installations used UHMW polyethylene, others used standard PP.

Gear configurations vary more than with Koch — some Jessup barrels use bronze gears, others use plastic. Tooth counts are most often 80 or 96. The trunnion pin diameter on Jessup barrels is sometimes the imperial 1.5" rather than the metric 38mm — close, but not identical, and the difference matters for replacement bearing fit. On older 24/7 lines, the gear bores have often worn oversized through use; replacement barrels can be sized to the actual current bore rather than the original spec, so the new barrel fits the existing wear pattern.

Hardwood Line — Common Patterns

Hardwood Line was a smaller manufacturer than Koch or Jessup, and their barrels often appear on lines built for specialty plating — copper, brass, or chrome rather than zinc. Non-standard sizes show up more often; 16×42 and 22×54 are both seen. Door designs vary widely (sliding catch, linkage, hinged single door).

Hardwood Line documentation is the hardest to find of the three — the company changed ownership multiple times and records are scattered. Plan for either a sample-barrel shipment for reverse engineering or an on-site visit if no drawings exist.

When You Don't Have Drawings

Two approaches: field measurement (the article above), or Eagle reverse engineering from a sample barrel.

Reverse engineering means shipping one or two existing barrels (or just an end head and gear) to Eagle's facility in Telford, UK. Eagle's engineering team measures and documents them, produces full drawings, and uses those drawings as the baseline for the replacement design. It's the most thorough approach but adds time to the project because of the international shipping legs. It's the right choice when field measurement isn't practical — usually because existing barrels are out of service and inaccessible, or because the design has details that are hard to capture with a tape measure (gear tooth profile, bearing seat fit, door clip geometry).

The Sample Barrel Approach (Middle Ground)

An intermediate option: ship a single existing barrel (or even just an end head) to Eagle while the rest of the line continues operating on remaining inventory. Eagle measures the sample, designs the replacement, produces drawings, and quotes from there. This is faster than full reverse engineering and more reliable than field-measurement-only when the existing equipment is unfamiliar. It's appropriate when you have a working line, can spare one barrel from service, and need accuracy on details that aren't easily measured by hand.

Budget Reality

Replacement barrels for legacy lines typically cost more per unit than barrels for new-line installations. The driver is engineering overhead: each replacement requires either custom drawing work or design verification against existing equipment, even when standard barrel sizes apply. Plan on a moderate per-unit premium versus equivalent new-line pricing — the exact figure depends on how much custom design and reverse engineering the project requires.

Total project lead time depends heavily on whether source drawings exist, whether field measurement is sufficient, and whether reverse engineering or a sample barrel is involved. Each path is realistic; they just compress or extend the calendar in different ways. If you're approaching end-of-life on existing barrels and have a hard operational deadline, that constrains which paths are workable — flag the deadline early so the project can be sequenced to fit it.