Watermill Blog -  Matching Paint
26th June 2008

After Tuesday's efforts with paint brushes and undercoat we tried our chosen finish colour today. Amongst several other activities, of course.

Bob painted the door frame of the front door and we gave it half a day to dry.

Then we shut the door to bring the old and new paints side by side. We are pretty pleased with the result, although none of us are sure we like the colour.

Eventually all the external woodwork will be this colour, including the new windows in the top floor.

Dick spent the day marking out the route of the footpath from the top of the steps to the road gate. The pegs he hammered into the ground are all made from quite fresh rhododrendon so we had better finish the path fairly quickly or it will be overgrown before we know it.

Martyn, Colin, Max and Richard spent some time in the workshop with the beam that lifts the sack hoist pinion.

Only half of the original beam was left so we had no choice but to make a new beam. The outer end, to the left in the picture, is informed guesswork but the rest of the beam is a copy of what was left of the original.

All four edges are beaded and Martyn expended considerable effort modifying a commercial router bit to match the style of the old timbers.
Richard then drove the router while Colin and Max steadied the beam and kept the power cable away from the cutter.

As we put the mechanism back together we are still not sure how it was controlled. Some things are fairly obvious, there is a spring loaded catch to keep the drive disengaged for example, but just how the drive was engaged and released remotely is still a mystery. It was probably all done with strong string, none of which has survived.

The last two members of today's team both did what they do best. In Jonathan's case this was brickwork or more precisely pointing brickwork. Headley used his metalwork skills to fix the bevel gear at the mill end of the PTO shaft firmly into place.

We must have been enjoying ourselves because it was 5 o'clock by the time we called it a day.

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