Cats Paws - Watermill Blog
11th November 2008

We found cats paws clearly pressed into a brick today. They must date from when the brick was made, before it was fired.

The brick is in one of the window sills in the stable barn and came to light when Bob was giving the area a thorough clean as part of the pointing and general titivation of that area of the interior wall.

The webmaster has not seen the last of the technical gremlins that frustrated him last week, but they are confined to his camera so far this week. Not too many of today's pictures are usable which is a shame because some useful work got done.

Today's team was made up of Martyn, Colin, John, Dick, Headley, Bob, Kim, Jim and Richard. The weather was clear and bright but felt quite cold. The whole team took a break at 11:00 to observe the 2 minute silence.

Headley had welded up two of the grating to go over the PTO shaft channel and he spent some time with Martyn and Colin fixing the support brackets and then preparing more steel for the remaining gratings. Colin went on to clean up more of the parts of the root shredder.

John made some inroads into the supply of coping bricks that arrived last week, applying them to the retaining wall nearest the farmyard. In spite of the cold and damp he made good progress.

Jim and Richard worked on the copy tun, remaking the corners so that they actually fit properly. This is proving to be much easier with two pairs of hands and should produce a much better copy than Richard's first attempt.

Kim continued the repair of the metal siding on the walls. This piece is against the west wall by the upstream pair of millstones.

This area of floor needed to be repaired before the wall siding could be fastened to it, but this has now been done with the majority of the original material being retained.

Dick earned the gratitude of the rest of the team by eliminating most of the draughts that used to blow round the hayloft. The master-stroke was to hang a hop sack over the door between the two section of hayloft. The section that we use for our breaks is now much more comfortable, although it still gets cold enough to get us back to work to keep warm.

Leave this tale of cats paws and go to the next entry

Go to the previous Watermill Blog entry

Learn how to Support Us

Return to our Home Page