More old stuff...

Lots of things to do as per usual but sometimes you have to take five and smell the roses. Sunday was such a day and found me in the back blocks of Trentham on the hunt for timber. Well I didn't have to hunt too far or wide as this timber, Hawthorn to be precise, was sitting in a very large heap in Tom's paddock waiting to be burned.

I had mentioned to a new acquaintance Stuart, that Hawthorn was a useful timber for turning into handles, draw-pulls etc. ( it also ebonises well ) and had shown him a long 'slick' handle that I had turned from some Hawthorn from Dad's farm. The following day saw us selecting some nice long lengths of Hawthorn trunk from the pile. Enough to fill more than half of the ute. Thank you Tom and thanks Stuart!

While we were there Tom's son Angus, gave us a tour of the rest of the farm including one particularly nice old stone building near the banks of the Coliban River.

This old beauty which is thankfully fenced off from livestock was too interesting to pass by without having a look. Buildings like this have such an interesting story to tell, if your prepared to listen....or look.

On walking inside I immediately looked up and saw the original hand split shakes in the roof. While staring wide eyed at the perfectly split shakes, I cast my eyes towards the rafters and noticed the tell tale diagonal saw marks on them. A closer look ( unfortunately very hard to see in the photo taken with my phone ) confirmed that the rafters were indeed pit-sawn, another indication of just how old the building was.

Just as interesting were the tiles on the floor, which again were hand made and as Stuart recognised, contained flecks of quartz and other impurities amongst the clay. The last time I had seen hand made colonial tiles like these was at Mont de Lancey Homestead in Wandin, where they hold them in great esteem. I know it's hard work and it costs money but we all should do everything we can to ensure these connections to our past don't fade away to a distant memory, as once they are gone, they're gone for good.

After running around preparing for a days saw milling tomorrow, I did manage to fit in a little more work on the Huon Pine Vanity/stand for the bathroom, getting the frame glued, the top re-sawn, milled, glued and beveled and the drawer stock milled and dovetailed.

The drawer runners and kickers just have to be fitted and drawer the finished off, then the top planed and fitted. The drawer will be a little unusual too as it will have to stop short to allow for the basin waste pipe. More on that later.