Hi everyone tonight:

Eventhough my background is mainly historic woodworking which involves hewing, timberframing, adzing, general historic carpentry, I also had to be able to produce authentic wall finishes which included not only wood finishes but plaster finishes using only historic mixtures.

As the years rolled by the operation and maintenance of the 1846 Mullay Saw mill became a part of my regular job description, which continued and ensued multiple repairs and restorations of the equipment and the mill itself.

When I talk about the Grist mill above you probably wonder how I became involved with that type of mill which seems to be so far removed from sawing lumber with a vertical blade. The task of installing the husking frame was suddenly part of my responsibility during the resoration process, then installing the steam engine which sits on a very heavy oak base which had to be custom made came up for me to fabricate and install, all this I enjoyed being a part of.

The mill itself needed some replacement sills and plates these were custom hewn to match the original ones, and had to be ready when the construction crew required them.

All in allit was a learning process, and working with various groups of tradesmen including and historic miller and his son I was introduced to and had to assist them in placing and setting the bed stones and runners, along with the pulleys and adjustments to the grinding stones.

One thing that I did learn was eventhough everything looks very crude to your eye, things like the stone adjustments were very accurate, and one could adjust the separation of the stones by the thousands of an inch increments due to the manner of the installation.

The same is true of the Mullay Saw milling equipment it looks very crude but in reality it's adjustments are like a fine watch

Well I guess I will sign off for tonight if there is anything dealing with the topics as I talk and explain day to day just leave me a note and I will be glad to expand on that particular topic for you

NH