Day 4, Sunrise Mill CBW (October 1, 2019)

Day four started out like the beautiful fall day it should be. After a cool day and very cool night, everyone was refreshed and ready to go. Neil led us in stretching tired muscles and getting us focused on the work at hand rather than our lives outside the workshop.

After the daily stretching and centering exercises, Dale reviewed the day's plan and the daily safety message.

Days four and five are much like day three - we have many people boring mortises, as Bruce Cowie is doing below.

We also have folks completing the mortises with their chisels and mallets, like our other Bruce (of the Scarberry variety here).

And checking the mortises as they complete them, as Paige Heron is doing here.

We also have folks finishing post tenons, as Jim Faulk is doing below.

And, cutting braces and diagonal members as Peter von Tiesenhausen and Alicia Heron are.

Just as it happens in every workshop, the observer graduates to the user - as Erin Evans does below while Dave Maynard looks on.

We are using scarf joints to join the plates, which run over the tops of the posts as they did in the original sash mill. The original rafter plates were only 7x8 timbers, but given our building codes and better understanding of wood strength, we are using 9x9 timbers. Documentation of the original mill includes photographs depicting the massive 11x15 posts having split so badly that rods were installed to arrest the failure. We will be using rods as well to control the rolling of the plates that would otherwise be induced by the thrust of the un-tied common rafters.

One new activity for the volunteers was fabricating the housings for the ties and other members. Todd Herzog is using an axe to cut a housing in the photo below.

The instructors' goal is to have every volunteer try their hand at riving a peg. Here, Mary Speer is taking her turn on the horse.

The day started out cool, but the clouds burned off and we had a sunny afternoon - and a very hot second half to the day. As often happens during our workshops, hydration is one of the major safety efforts, as well as sunblock.

Xavier Gallant, who traveled down from Quebec City, uses the boring machine to create mortises in the post, operating the machine as demonstrated earlier by Neil.

We had quite a few volunteers working on tenons this afternoon, including Jim, Robert, Ron, Erin, Dave, Bob R, and Ginny.

We close today with Will Beemer, seen here using a gas-assisted hand tool to cross-cut a timber to length.

PS: Despite the heat and the sun, we had a hard time convincing our volunteers that the day was over and they needed to pack up their tools and head out for dinner - a delicious feast of pulled pork and libations provided by our client Ella.

Ella presented to the group this token of appreciation, donated by one of the Montgomery County sponsors, Brothers Kershner Brewery. We of course immediately pressed it into service (literally). Expect to see this souvenir at future Guild events.