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Thread: Handmade Tap and Screwbox Project

  1. #16
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    Longview WA
    Posts
    27,347
    Blog Entries
    1
    The trouble also is,if some letter or document doesn't mention some trade,or some entertainment that went on in town,they feel that it didn't exist.
    So, if there is a letter mentioning questionable women distracting the men of the town are they going to make sure to have such today? I don't think so.

    Like so many things labeled "authentic" it bares no relation to reality.

    jim
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  2. #17
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Location
    Williamsburg,Va.
    Posts
    12,402
    Earl Soles,my director,indeed went to Somerset and photographed a large cider mill and apple crusher . I used his pictures to reproduce these machines.

    The place you mention could very well be where the originals were. It has been a long time,and I have forgotten by now these details.

    The large top timber of the cider press in his pics was made of a large log. The front of this large log was left unworked,and was the gnarly surface of the tree from which it had come.

    Did the press you mention look like that? When I made the mill,I got a large old log over 3' in diameter,with a similar gnarly surface. The log was sawn lengthwise on 3 sides. The one edge was left as natural.

    I well remember the back breaking work of sawing a 12' long fairly dry log of TOUGH hickory lengthwise with a chainsaw. As I mentioned,the log had barbed wire in it from many,many years past,when it had been the corner of some farmer's fence. I kept running into that,which didn't help matters.

    Finally,the surfaces had to be hand adzed down,and I still have my old costume shoes,with several cuts in the sides of the soles where my sharp lipped adze came under my foot.

    Did you guys know that in the old days,adze men worked bare footed,using their TOES as chip breakers? They must have become very expert,but I was no life long adze man!!! Except for building stump pullers with log frames as a teenager in Alaska,I hadn't used an adze for many years,and I had that adze honed extremely sharp!!

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