Watermill Blog -  New Oak
25th March 2008

Martyn, Colin, Richard, John D, John N and Kim met in the morning and Max joined us a bit later. After exchanging Easter greetings and a couple of birthday cards we got stuck in to some work.

Colin had provided a pair of shrubs, hebe something or other, and these were soon planted either side of the front steps to the mill.

John D spent his day in the same area repairing the brickwork of the light well. He did quite a lot of muttering about how poor the brickwork was and how awkward it was to get at. Maybe there's a connection.

The mill expert has given his approval of our proposed repair to the rotten hurst post and we just need to get on with it. The first step is to tidy up the old post and fix the new oak to it.

Richard has done this kind of repair in softwood on some of the window frames but the post is oak and a much larger scale. We already have a plywood template for the new oak and we cut the top of the new timber to shape carefully.

Making the matching socket in the old piece was our first challenge. It took most of the day but we ended up with a good fit.

The size and weight of the pieces involved meant that even offering up the sections was a two man job.

We also made a start on cutting the three mortice slots in the new timber, two parallel slots for the double tenon of the bridge tree and one much larger mortice for the hurst cross piece. These are going to take quite a while to complete as they go all the way through six inches of new oak.

Most of the time this was going on on the ground floor of the mill, Max was working on the top floor on the repair to the sack hoist. This repair is replacing worm eaten timber with new to give the winding drum some strength and is keeping Max busy.

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