A day full of sunshine and swallowtails. Not really all that warm yet today, but what a marvelous day to be out and about. I took a short walk here at the park early this morning and then took the truck out for a bit of a road trip this afternoon.

    Went down through the town of Bassett first. Once home to Bassett Furniture, there isn't much left of the company after they shipped most of the jobs overseas because workers there only demand a dollar or two a day and are still way cheaper than having to pay people a minimum wage. Of course now there aren't as many people here that can afford your furniture once you import it back in to the U.S., but there must still be some demand for it somewhere in the world. Sorry; it was just kind of depressing to see the empty shells of one warehouse after another, even if it was sunny outside.

   On to the town of Stuart next. Went through that town the other day, but hadn't stopped to see their little bit of 'old town'. Not a whole lot there as the town isn't very big to begin with. Still some neat old buildings though, and there were a couple stores and a cafe still open there on main street.

    Back around into Martinsville where I stopped to get something to drink and check for phone messages. There is no phone service, at least for my phone, here in the park so I was surprised to see and hear that I had two on there from my friend in Floyd. One was to invite me up for dinner and a walk, so it was off to the big city.

    We had a wonderful walk down an old road along the river. A good couple of miles at least so our appetite was going gangbusters by the time we got back into the city. Dinner at Natasha's again this evening, really the only place open in Floyd on a Tuesday, other the Mexican restaurant. Tonight it was a buffalo burger done just right, with some to die for onion rings. A glass of iced tea and a view of the sunset from the deck. Yup, sometimes life is just really good.

    Finally got my mill pictures loaded up today at the Bassett library. Lot's of photo's this time but not all of them are of the mill. Hope you enjoy them all.

Mabry Mill near the Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway near the town of Meadows of Dan, Virginia. - May 2013

These photo's are from two different day trips to the site. This one was taken on the sunnier day. An interesting mill for several reasons. For one thing it was used to do 3 separate jobs. It was a full fledged lumber mill most of the time with a carriage and circular saw blade that looked like it could handle up to a 24" diameter log, maybe 20-25 feet long, in a single pass. It was also a grist mill in the center section with stones to grind corn and some of the other larger grains. Lastly there was a wood shop with a powered jig saw, jointer and tongue and groove machine for flooring and siding.

A shot from the rainy day trip.

There are a lot of photo's so some of them won't have comments to go with them.

 

There are a total of three small creeks or water courses that the builder/owner had joined together via ditches and flumes to power the mill. The stone culvert was the outlet of the outfall pond and runs under the parkway road.



 

 

The mill used an 'overshot' type of water wheel to power it. In this type of arrangement and flume or pipe would deliver water to the top of the wheel and let gravity as well as water pressure assist in turning the wheel.  

 

A view of the wheel. If you look closely in this picture as well as the next one you will see a secondary wheel mounted onto the main power wheel. This wooden wheel had a series of metal teeth or cogs along the outside edge that matched up with the much small wheel in the picture below. Because of the difference in diameter this would spin that smaller wheel at a much higher rate of speed which then could be used to run the jig saw and jointer in the wood shop area. The main wheel meanwhile would be used to power the slower lumber and grist mill machines.

Note the smaller, higher speed, metal wheel mated to the larger wooden wheel with metal teeth.

A view of the wheel from inside the mill.

Old mill stones that have been ground down to a point where they are now to thin to re-dress.

Also on the grounds was this rather interesting relic from the timber cutting industry. This is a set of 'Big Wheels', though I have seen pictures of some that were a good 8-10 feet in diameter. If you look at the following photo's as I try to explain this it might, hopefully, make some sense to you..... Once a tree was cut down and the limbs removed and cut to length, one of these sets of wheels would be backed up over one of the ends. The wooden lever would be raised which would drop the metal 'log dog's' down low enough to be attached low down into the front of the log. (cont. below) 

If the log was small enough, and these wheels would only handle logs up to maybe 30-40 inches in diameter, the lever would be pulled down and locked into place thus raising the front end of the log. A team of oxen would then proceed to drag the log out of the forest to whereever it was convenient to either load it onto another mode of transport or to a mill itself.

A couple of points here; the lever in the picture has warped. Normally it would be straight so that it could be locked into the eyebolt you can see at the end of the yoke assembly. Also; note how the bottom of the wheels are 'toed' inward. This was actually by design. As a heavy load was placed into the chains the weight would pull down the center of the metal beam in the center and the wheels would actually straighten out. Pretty good engineering for that period.

Another view showing the lever in it's raised position. Note that the log dogs are now low enough to touch the ground.

A view of the back end showing the metal beam and to some degree the metal axle's. Having few metal parts it would be easy to haul the few critical parts into the woods on a pack horse and then build the rest from trees in the surrounding forest.

Not much here that a good blacksmith couldn't make in an afternoon or two.

Moving parts would of been greased of course.

One of the farm wagons that might of hauled in bags of corn to be milled.

A very old seed planter. This one is starting to melt back into the earth it came from.

Part of the mill construction showing some of the dovetailed joints at the corners. Pretty good for construction that is nearly 150 years old and has been out in the elements for all of that time.

Finally; they had this re-creation of a small 'still' set up in the woods as it might of been way back when.