De-Constructing The Mill (Part 1)

Hard working brothers:
Hard working Father and Son: Tim and Tim have been working hard on digging out the old Mill so that we can reconstruct the original structure. It's taking a lot of investigative work to figure out how the original Mill was constructed. We have old photographs but there's nothing like seeing it pulled apart to determine how to put it back as close to the original design as possible. When we get to the roof it will be anybody's guess but the foundation is there and getting dug out for the next several weeks.
Terry was there this last weekend to help with the digging and de-construction too!

This is the flume side of the Mill below what was the log deck. The log deck is where raw logs got rolled into the Mill for sawing into various sized boards:

Above this are two shots of the timbers underneath the log deck and saw. The 'V' shaped flume was under there as well to carry sawdust out of the way and up into the sawdust pile on the far side of the entrance road.

This is a shot of where we dug out just past the log deck into the Mill next to where the old saw was located.

Here's Tim and Tim digging out the rest of the footings across from the log deck. We cleared out about 27 feet of foundation under the log deck this weekend. But all of that old rotten wood needs to be cleared away and new beams will be put in place during the re-build!

The old flume:

Terry will be back next month for more fun!