Restoration of the grist mill built by Lewis Turner and Henry Harden Hall circa 1850 began with repairs to the wood structure of the front wall by Joseph Turner in the early 1990's. He replaced one window on the lower floor and the rotted clapboard siding on the lower four feet or so of that wall shown in this old photograph. Unfortunately, the replacements did not exactly match the original items. During the summer of 1997, the crumbled remnants of the adjacent planning mill/carpenter shop were cleared away. All traces of the sawmill once between that shop and the grist mill had long since disappeared. There is no evidence of any other restoration activity prior to acquisition of the property by George Charlie Cox in February of 1999.

Shortly after obtaining title, George and his helpers removed the remnants of the old water wheel, shown here, cleaned the accumulated silt, trash and debris from its pit, and dug out the tail race which had been completely filled in. They then rebuilt the badly deteriorated lower east wall, visible behind the wheel ruins. In doing so, they mortared adjacent portions of the rear foundation to strengthen it, added a sturdy oak post to prop up the wall sill, repaired several floor joists, and added an access door.

Because the iron core portions of the original water wheel were rusted together and one of the hubs had a large and crudely repaired crack, George contracted with The Water Wheel Factory of Franklin, North Carolina, to build an all steel ten foot diameter wheel. This photo shows the new wheel in place in the refurbished pit, but not yet bolted down. Just enough of the toothed rack segments once bolted to the face of the original wheel were found buried in the silt to outfit the new wheel by sawing the surviving segments in half length wise. Although this halved the tooth face area, and therefore the power transfer capacity of the circular rack and pinion connecting the wheel to the main drive shaft, that limitation was considered acceptable in light of any anticipated future mill operations. Although the new wheel has a bucket width of only 32 inches versus 50 inches in the old one, the original pit walls were retained and repaired. A section of large diameter flexible drain pipe was installed in the tail race trench. The adjacent lower corner of the front wall was chinked with mortar, as much of the front wall outer side had been at some time in the past, probably when repairs were made to the wooden structure mentioned above. Note the taller window on the far end of the first story and the wider clap boarding below the windows on that wall added during those repairs.

The next major restorative effort involved building four mortared stone buttresses on deep concrete footings against the front basement wall as shown in this photo. In the spring of 1992, an extended period of heavy rains glutted Little Goblintown Creek and all of its branches, flooding the surrounding lowland and the cellar of the grist mill to a depth of about six feet at the front of the building. The front wall of the dry stone basement bulged outward. Although the building stayed upright and plumb, the condition of that principal foundation wall mandated serious reinforcement. Interestingly, the stones for the buttresses came from the original chimney of the John L. Wood house, about a mile away and now occupied by Stan Spencer. Stan, an active mechanical engineer and a direct descendant of Thomas Spencer who sold what became the mill land to Lewis Turner in 1817, is a key member of the restoration crew.

Those same flood waters caused the upper sections of the heavy oak beam structure supporting the mill stones and primary power train components to shift, and the foot of the central post supporting the second story to rot away. The shift carried the mill stones toward the front of the building enough to skew their vertical drive shafts about two degrees out of plumb, and the rotting caused the heavy transverse beam supporting the second story floor to sag about four inches in its jointed middle. That sagging was corrected by jacking the center post (which has no attachment to the first floor), restoring its footing, and adding thick doubler boards to its lower end. To restore the mill stone drive shafts to plumb, the main shaft bearings and the vertical shaft pedestals were moved and remounted directly under the bed stones. This photo shows the main shaft complex before that work began. In the foreground is the bevel gear set for the larger 48 inch stone set and the 36 inch pulley once used to accept power by belt from a steam engine outside the front wall of the basement which is to the left in the photo. In the background are the middle line bearing, shaft coupling, and the drive for the smaller 42 inch stone set. The new wheel can be seen through the open new access door.

Only the drive mechanism for the smaller stone set has been refurbished to date. A sealed roller thrust bearing was added to a shoulder on the vertical shaft at the pedestal above its bronze journal and thrust bearings to take the vertical loading off of the old oiled flat disk bearing surface at the shaft's bottom end. This photo shows the restoration crew's chief engineer and machinist, Stan Spencer, as he worked on that assembly. The bevel gear on the hanging vertical shaft resisted days of penetrant soaking, jacking and pulling. It was finally freed by careful application of heat from a pair of propane torches. The shoulder retaining the new roller thrust bearing is visible below the bevel gear. Stan had already replaced the outboard section of shafting from the coupling shown to the pinion, and rebabitted the line bearings. Up above, the vertical shaft journal bearing in the 42 inch bed stone was cleaned, and the shaft packing to keep grain from the bearing was replaced.

This photo shows the upper end of that runner drive shaft above the bed stone surface of the smaller stone set. The shaft is jacked about an inch above its normal position to facilitate access to the packing box, the cover of which is the convex plate with the hold down clip resting on the top cover plate of the bed stone journal bearing. Just above the packing box is a wooden slinger ring with a sheet metal band press fitted to the shaft journal. Above the slinger ring is the cast iron spade which is keyed to the shaft and whose two arms engage slots in the runner bore. At the very top of the shaft is a rounded knob on which the "rynd", an iron yoke carrying the weight of the runner stone, pivots.

Here the lead seated rynd and one of the two spade slots are visible in the bore of the runner stone. The granite is nine inches thick. The plaster of Paris backing on the stone's top shows just beyond the rynd.

Throughout the efforts described thus far, the mill interior remained essentially as Charlie Martin left it, save for forty years' accumulation of dust, mud wasp nests, bird and vermin remains, and the graffiti of several visitors chalked on the grain ducts and machinery during those years of idleness. In addition to those projects already mentioned: the service porch on the west end of the building was completely rebuilt; rotted out flooring and joists of both floors inside the west wall were replaced or bolstered; the stairway between the two floors was repaired and strengthened; major leaks in the roof were repaired; and the exterior sides and roof were freshly painted.

Initially, the first floor was used as a staging area for those other projects. In this photo, the two remaining stone sets on the first floor are shown, with the unshrouded 48 inch buckwheat set in the foreground, and the smaller 42 inch corn set beyond in the same condition as when it was last used. In the left foreground are several of the narrower cast iron, circular rack segments awaiting installation on the new steel water wheel. Between the stone sets, the flooring patch where the original third set of stones were removed is visible.

This is a view along the rear wall of the first floor. In the right foreground, the mantle of the shallow, typically Scottish, fireplace is visible. In front of the vertical slot in the east wall, through which the flume gate was controlled, is the old beam balance scale used to weigh incoming raw grain and outgoing finished product. On the floor is the upper drive drum from the delivering grain conveyor which moved ground meal from the buckwheat stones to the bolter on the second floor.

When cleanup began on the second floor, breathing masks and a large ventilating fan were required, in addition to widely opened windows, because of the fineness and nature of the accumulated dust. Scattered parts of the machinery including conveyor belting and housing sections, sections of wooden grain ducting, and pieces of machinery running gear such as sprockets, shafting and pulleys were collected and sorted. Buried in the dust and trash about the floor and in the nooks and crannies of the machinery were dozens of itemized and dated receipts from the 1940's which provide an inventory of the stock carried by Charlie Martin in his country store nearby the grist mill. He sold virtually everything a family might require to farm, clothe and subsist in the country, as well as little luxuries such as candies and coca cola.

This photo, looking along the front wall of the second floor, shows the corn cleaner in the background, and the idle rotary screen separator or bolter in the left foreground. This was probably the original flour grader when the mill was first built. It has been completely disassembled and removed from the building for restoration as a museum display. The thicker diagonal object over the corn cleaner is its supply duct from the receiving grain conveyor, and the two thinner elements are stays or braces from the front building wall.

This view down the back wall of the second floor shows a portion of the wheat cleaner air plenum and of its scalping shoe littered with a fabric belt remnant on the right, and an end view of the bolter in the background. The sloping construct over the bolter and behind its grain supply duct was installed sometime in the past as an umbrella against rain water and melting snow from the leaky roof. The runoff from it caused the rotting of both floors inside the west wall mentioned above.

The first piece of machinery to be restored was the corn cleaner, shown here with Jack Williamson the leading machinery restorer. After removing the supply duct from the receiving grain conveyor and two 2 X 2 pine braces from the front building wall, the tongue in groove boards forming the top of the machine were removed along with the conical section of sheet metal on the suction side of the blower. These were all held in place by rusted round head wood screws, which were discarded. The sheet metal casing of the blower and some of the discharge duct woodwork were then opened to gain access to the blower housing and vanes. The blower cavity, containing the remnants of an owl's nest, was vacuumed out along with the discharge duct. The blower vanes were determined to be solid and in good condition, as was the sheet metal housing. The blower shaft babbited bearings were opened and cleaned, with the journals showing some scoring, but not unacceptably so. The air plenum was vacuumed out, with its two flapper valves and poplar wall structure determined to be in almost "as new" condition, save for a missing butterfly nut on one of the valve control lever arc keepers which was replaced. The square shoulders of the short carriage bolts for these keepers on both flapper controls were floating in the plenum wall from usage, so both heads were epoxied in place. The outside surfaces of all wooden pieces of the machine and its ducting were cleaned with ACE Hardware Furniture Restorer fluid and fine steel wool. After drying, all were brushed with Tongue Oil. Inside wooden surfaces were cleaned with fine sand paper where needed, which wasn't very much, then vacuumed and wiped with a clean dry rag. Sheet metal components were cleaned with fine sand paper and sprayed with flat black "Rustoleum" paint. The upper section of the machine and blower were then reassembled using new wood screws. The blower shaft bearings were lubricated with "Molycote" and protected from dirt intrusion through their lubricant reservoirs. The cleaned blower spun smoothly and easily. The lower portion of the machine, consisting primarily of the two section vibrating separator sieve was similarly cleaned and refinished. The two sheet metal troughs for discharge and collection of sieve waste in buckets are somewhat deteriorated and will be replaced. Missing from the machine are the two sprockets and chain connecting the blower shaft and the sieve shaker shaft.

The next piece of machinery to be refurbished was the wheat cleaner, a rather massive set of three components called a "EUREKA SMUT & SEPARATING MACHINE". It was probably among the first 200 such machines manufactured by Howes, Babcock & Company of Silver Creek, New York, in the first year after their founding in 1864. As shown in this picture, the three main components, top to bottom, are: the smutter consisting of a wooden air plenum with flapper gate valves as in the corn cleaner, a large horizontal blower with its discharge duct, and a smutter cage on a single vertical shaft; a sloped, vibrating screen or scalping shoe; and a rotating conical cockle cylinder, all supported by a sturdy timber platform and frame. Incoming raw grain was subjected to plenum suction air as it passed into the top of the smutter cage which contains a set of spinning vertical blades. These, aided by air forced upwards into the cage by vanes on the main shaft at the cage bottom, slung product against the sheet steel shell of the cage which has many vertical slits. A segmented and removable wooden cover around the cage forms a vacuum chamber causing waste passing through the shell to be sucked into the blower hub and blown out of the building through the discharge duct. Cleaned grain exiting through holes in the bottom plate of the spinning cage was further subjected to plenum suction as it was ducted down to the scalping shoe. Heavier carry-over in the suction plenum dropped through traps into the funneled duct to the left of the cage in the picture for discarding or recycling. Grain size product dropping onto the scalping shoe passed through the screen and down to the bottom of the head end of the rotating cockle cylinder. Non-through material collected in a bin at the bottom end of the shoe and dropped onto a sloped, vibrating trash tray running down the length of the cockle cylinder a few inches above its bottom.

This view, looking back up the cylinder from its tail end (before refurbishment - the splotches on the shell are mud wasp nests) shows the trash tray and one of its two steel spring strips as well as the two carrier/drive shafts along the top of the cylinder. Scalping shoe "throughs" sloshed down the bottom of the rotating (counter clockwise in the picture) cylinder under the trash tray. Small, roundish material in the sloshing grain was caught up in the thousands of small dimples in the shell and carried up past the sloping apron seen to the right of the trash tray. After passing the apron, most of these fell by gravity back onto the apron and spilled into a sheet metal trough fixed to the vibrating trash tray. The rest were swept back to the apron by the fixed brush running the length of the cylinder wall above the apron. The position and tilt of the apron are adjustable to accommodate different grains and contaminants. Apron discharge traveled down the trough to join the trash tray contents at the tail end for discarding via a hopper on the first floor. Cleaned grain spilled from the tail end (under the trash tray) into the hopper feeding the wheat stone set.

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