Water Mill Blog - Many Tasks
10th January 2008

We had a good team today and managed to get on with many tasks. In part this was due to the weather, very wet in the morning but mild for January.

Colin and Headley worked together to replace the stone-nut hoist below the downstream pair of stones.

This needed a new hanger at one end as the original had disappeared. Headley made a copy of the hanger on the other hoist and they bolted it into the beam.

These hoists are used to lift the stone-nuts out of engagement with the main gear and are typically simple but effective.

John was frustrated by the weather in the morning but managed to get some bricklaying done after lunch. Because of the delay he couldn't get the wall finished today but he did manage some progress..

Martyn and Max made a start on repairing the garner floor, the top floor of the mill. They started by sweeping up to see what they had to deal with. The existing floor is a patchwork of old repairs, with boards of various widths and lengths.

Repairs are made more complicated by the grain bins which we are not going to disturb.

Where the floor has been repaired before and it is the repair that has decayed we are simply replacing the repair.

The picture shows the floor and the top centre-post bearing. This area seems to have suffered badly as it has been repaired before and decayed again. Max in particular seems to get satisfaction from matching the old patches exactly.

Richard finally finished the three hatches in the hay-loft, making finger holes so that they can be lifted with recourse to a chisel. He then made a small inspection hatch for the garner floor to allow access to the top centre-post bearing from above. There was a recess for a hatch but no old hatch to copy but there must have been some cover for what is actually a quite large hole in the floor.

Dave decided to work indoors and set about raking out the mortar joints inside the hayloft so that we can reinforce the brickwork with some helibars.

Once he rigged some good lights it became obvious that this is a major crack. Quite a lot of the bricks around the crack are loose and need rather more than just pointing up.

At least it is indoors in the dry.

Dick brought another batch of re-painted parts for the chaff cutter and then spent the day stengthening on of the work benches and generally making the stable a much better place to work in.

The team decided that we needed to know if the waterwheel would self-start now we have a full head of water in the pool. Some of the Court House team were also on site and expressed an interest in seeing the wheel run so we just had to try it out.

We now have enough water pressure to spray over the top of the wheel onto the path! The wheel just has to satrt to get out of the way.

We went home soon afterwards to get dry.

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