No I'm not that old, I just made the box however the wood is somewhere around 125-135 years old. My grandfather bought the farm with the barn during the depression. The wood is from that barn where I grew up in Central Illinois. Majority of the beams were 12x12 white oak hand hewn held together with mortise and tenon with a round pin going completely through the joint. Each of these beams were from individual trees, some as long as 20 feet. This piece was a brace and was about 4x6 and either cut at a saw mill or by hand with a saw. The box is about 3 x 3.5 tall. Wood is very hard and dark. The inside of the top was not sanded and is as smooth as if sanded to 600 grit. I counted the growth rings and there are over 50, this is not the whole log, so I would say this is what is called old growth. The foundation was getting bad on the barn about 20 years ago so the barn was torn down, it was over 100 years old when demolished. Foundation was sandstone hauled in from about 5 miles away. Sandstone is soft and it was coming apart. Sorry for the history lesson but hope you don't mind, the wood has a story. I have a picture of the barn but would have to scan it in and have not done that. Comments welcome.
I scanned the picture of the barn. 4-H calves were kept inside the small door on the front left. Cattle lot used to be to the right of the barn. Hand dug family well is just to the right out of the picture. This was the only well on the farm and always kept us and the livestock supplied with water. Baled hay was brought in the big doors on the front then put into the loft on either side of the drive by hand. Then taken back out by hand to feed cattle in the winter. When we baled hay my job was to drive the tractor bringing hay in and take the empty wagon back to the hay field until I got older then I got to throw bales as well. Several neighbors helped then we helped them when they had hay to put up. Looks like the roof is sagging however that is just snow, roof was in good shape when it was torn down.
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