Catching up!

Sorry not to have posted anything for a few weeks, but life has been rather busy both at home and in the mill.
We have been milling (and selling) a lot of flour - failing to get far enough ahead of ourselves to deliver any to the shop. The ash spring on the shoe broke, so we have reinforced it with a metal coil spring.  The photo also shows the "sock" we have added to the shoe (!) to prevent grains bouncing off the damsel and over the stones, ending up whole in the flour.
On May 18th the river rose so fast that Richard had to stop the mill turning to prevent damage.  A lot of the pond liner in the wheel buckets stripped out, so Bob and (mostly) Ray replaced them the following Tuesday.

Meanwhile, work has continued on the drive for the shelling stones.  The steel plates have been finished and bolted to the stone nut - here Ray and Richard are drilling the top plate for the insertion of spring pins to help take the rotational force.

The cob oven is no more

  Work is supposed to be starting soon to restore the mill barn, so we have been busy removing everything important from its inside and immediate outside.  This includes several thousand roof slates, a huge amount of stone, the stone lintel beams for the kiln and, unfortunately, the cob oven.  Peter Dickens says he will build a new and better one when the barn is finished.