Hawkins House

Add One More To My Collection

2011-09-10T08:07:00.000-07:00

Last October, I wrote about some odd stuff I found in the house, mostly in the attic, including an old iron carpenter's stamp with a number 6 / number 9 on it.

Yesterday, while randomly prowling around under some attic floorboards, I found another old stamp, this one a number 5, amidst the dessicated corn cobs and acorn caps left behind by squirrelly visitors of the past:

Needless to say, there's quite a bit of debris in my joist bays. Soon, I'm going to begin cleaning it all out. But like every other project here, there's a need to proceed slowly, like an archeologist, sifting carefully through the rubble for things revealing of house history.

Just for the sake of comparison, here's my complete set of modern, hand-cut, 3/8" steel stamps (just a tad smaller than the stamps I've found, which are 1/2"). I like working with all manner of traditional tools, whether true antiques, or modern equivalents. These were made by the Hitt Marking Devices folks, in California/Arizona:

So, stay tuned for more postings on the massive attic exploration and clean-out effort, and we'll see what other sorts of things we come up with. I'm still hopeful, by the way, that there's an old musket hidden somewhere. I know it's there -- it's just a matter of time before I find it... :-)

Further Musings on Hawkins House Origins

2011-05-29T13:09:00.001-07:00

It always amazes me how much of what passes for knowledge is often just recycled opinion that often falls apart when held up against hard evidence. On the other hand, I also find it disturbing that the same evidence can often stare you straight in the face for a long time, never making an impression, until that one day when some line of reasoning requires you to take just one more look, and then suddenly, the truth becomes obvious.

This is business as usual, of course, when trying to precisely establish the material history of a very old home. At the time I bought the Hawkins house in 2007, for example, a belief deeply held by local historians was that my house had been moved twice, from one unknown location to another, and then to its current location on Hawkins Street. But my thorough investigation of a number of old maps indicated that the house had always been there. The hard physical evidence then came into play when it finally struck me that the footprint of the present day foundation and stone work surrounding the house lined up exactly with the original, above-grade foundation shown in several old photographs.

The Hawkins house shown in its present day location, on a Hughes and Bailey illustrated map of Derby, c. 1920.

I'm now of the mind that my house had been moved only temporarily, if at all, while the old foundation was being replaced with the current one. Or, perhaps even an in situ jacking and then lowering of the house back in place (undoubtedly a long and creaky affair, that might've even racked the house frame), some how transformed over time into an account of the home being moved between different sites.

More recently, I've begun to seriously question the original date of construction of the house. As my knowledge of the architectural trends of the New Haven Colony continues to expand, I've concluded that the present day Hawkins house is a product of the Third Period of colonization (approx. 1700-1750), and probably even of the later half of that period. In terms of its basic architectural form, the Hawkins house quintessentially is a late Third Period home.

A large joist spanning adjacent tie-beams at one end of the Hawkins house. A First Period home would've had a summer beam in this location (summers were either minimized, or disappeared entirely, around 1750). The half-dove tail joint prevents the tie-beams from drifting apart, so the remaining joists, running parallel to this one, are simply dropped in place, without dove tailed ends. This joist effectively divides the house frame into front and back sections, and supports 2x vertical planks, forming a partition wall just below. You can see the ends of these planks on the left side of the joist.

However, the historical record also tells us that Joseph Hawkins built a home in this location sometime between 1670 and 1681. That home most likely would've been of the First Period style, consisting of two floors, with two rooms on each floor, and a large, central chimney. During the Second and Third Periods, many older, First Period homes were expanded into saltboxes, through the incorporation of a lean-to addition, providing a full kitchen on the first floor in the rear of the house, and small, second floor garrets on either side of the chimney column.

View from the southeast bed chamber looking into the spinning room. Even from a photograph, one can easily discern the downward slope of both the spinning room floor and tie-beam (just over the far door leading into the northeast birthing room).

The present day Hawkins house is not a saltbox; rather, a full two-story home with attic. But recently, I found myself wondering if there were any possibility that my home might be a latter day conversion of an earlier Hawkins house, retrofitted by some descendant of Joseph Hawkins. And with that, of course, some previously unaccounted-for physical evidence began to click in my mind. Two things, in particular, now stand out:

1) The entire rear half of the house frame on the second floor has a distinct downward slope toward the rear wall. In the attic, this is even more apparent: You can clearly see that the front half of the attic floor forms a more-or-less level plane, while the rear half of the attic floor (just beyond the large attic joists that effectively divide the front and rear of the house, while stabilizing adjacent tie-beams) clearly slopes downward. This odd feature often (though not always) is a characteristic of an old timber frame home that had been extended at some point in its past.

2) If my home is indeed a conversion of an older house, it is not at all unlikely (again, based on its architectural style) that that conversion might've taken place in the mid to late 1700s. That might account for the strange "100 yea old" epithet white washed on one of the roof planks in the front of the house. The front half of the house indeed could've been "one hundred years old", at the time when the new, rear addition of the house had just been built. And some one, at the time, might've needed to make a note of that fact.

White washed message on the roof deck, proclaiming "100 yea old". This is in the front section of the Hawkins house attic.

Ultimately, a dendrochronological survey, together with a much more thorough visual inspection of the frame than I've done so far (in search of splices, empty mortises, etc.), should settle these questions. However, until I get at least to that point in my current surveys, any notion of a conversion from an earlier house is but mere speculation on my part.

There also are a number of other oddities through out my home that might eventually find their way to explanations if a Hawkins house conversion could indeed be established, including this strangely filled-in section of the second floor parlor chamber, which spans the entire length of the parlor, and is of the same width as the landing just beyond the door.

Cut-out section of the parlor chamber floor, running along the front wall of the Hawkins house. The cut-out was subsequently filled with shortened planks. I'm curious what I'd find underneath, were I to pry any of the shorts planks up.

I don't know (yet) if there is a corresponding construction in the hall chamber, since its plank flooring is completely covered by a "modern floor" (probably mid-19th century, based on its construction), but at some point, I intend to find out.

Nineteenth century overlay flooring in the hall chamber: 5/4 x 4 tongue-and-groove boards, face-nailed with 8d machine cut square nails.

Here's one final example of physical evidence going unnoticed until some other event makes its meaning more obvious. In the second floor southeast bed chamber, there is a cut-out similar to that of the parlor chamber, only smaller in length. It's also filled by old planks. For some time, I had wondered why it was there. The only obvious thing is that two closet spaces had been built over it in more recent times.

Cut-out in the the second floor southeast bed chamber. The short planks extend out to the far wall of the "closet", which happens to be the vertical plank partition wall described in the first photo of this post.

One day, I was in the cellar, looking up at the first floor rafters for some reason, when I noticed an identical cut-out, filled with modern dimensional lumber, directly under the same location and more or less of the same dimensions. That's when it struck me that this was a remnant of the old rear stairway, which led from the second floor work area in the rear of the house, down to the kitchen, and then further into the cellar. It might've been enclosed in paneling, but one side of it was defined by the old vertical plank partition wall that still divides the front and back of the house to this day (only now covered by plaster and wall board).

Until then, I was always wondering why the Hawkins house never had a second stair in the rear, like other homes of its day. It never occurred to me I'd been looking at it all along.

Tying Joint 3D Model

2011-04-28T12:52:00.000-07:00

Here are several views of the latest iteration of the 3D model I'm developing of the tying joint used in the Hawkins house frame. This joint is used to fasten each post to its respective tie-beam end, forming the bents, and then subsequently tie the bents themselves together via the front and back top plates, thus forming the basic, standing frame of the house.

The image below shows a typical post top, which is joined to its tie-beam via a tiesel tenon. I still need to determine if the tenon actually extends all the way back to the (non-tapered) end of the post, or if it stops just short of the post end (this is one of the least accessible areas of the post, as it faces the exterior sheathing):

The next image shows the corresponding tie-beam end. A large 3x8x9 shoulder cut out of the bottom of the tie-beam supports the 6x9 plate, which in turn has a mortise that accomodates the 2x8x9 tenon projecting horizontally from the end of the tie-beam, just above the shoulder. Plate and tie-beam are drawn together via a single 1 1/2" peg, pounded in from above. There is also a smaller hole to accomodate the end of the peg securing the rafter foot where it is stepped on to the plate. A mortise cut into the bottom of the shoulder, and extending partly into the tie-beam just beyond the shoulder, accomodates the post's tenon:

Note that, if the post tenon actually does indeed extend all the way to the back of the post, then this mortise is most likely opened at the end of the shoulder. I haven't determined yet if this is actually the case, but this is how I've modeled it for now. I also need to determine if the mortise is blind or open on top. Again, all this is difficult to discern, because this part of the joint is almost completely inaccessible to nondestructive probes.

The next image shows the tie-beam end, as viewed from below. There is a pronounced, adzed reduction in the bottom of the tie-beam, which, on average, extends about 9" inward from the inside edge of the mortise, and is about 1/2" deep:

Here is the tie-beam end, as it would appear facing head-on. An odd characteristic of the mortise, visible from this perspective, is that the blind part of the mortise, just beyond the shoulder, extends upwards an additional 1 3/4", despite the fact that the tenon itself has been measured as only 2 3/4" in length at this end. There is no obvious reason why the blind part of the mortise is cut much deeper than what the tenon actually requires:

Below is yet one more image of the tie-beam end, as viewed along its length:

And here's a photo of an actual Hawkins house tie-beam and post joined together. The plate, of course, is just beyond the wall and ceiling, so not visible in this photo:

The layout of this tying joint might very well be a vernacular design of the Second or Third Period of the New Haven Colony. It's a much simpler geometry than the classic English tying joint found in most First Period homes, and suggests that the Hawkins house might've been constructed later than claimed.

I've never seen this style of joint diagrammed in any of the early timber frame surveys I've studied. Several of my colleagues in the Timber Framers Guild's TTRAG told me they're not familiar with it either, and suggested it might very well be a design that originated in my local area. As I'd mentioned in a previous posting, the Reverend Richard Mansfield House, less than ten miles aways, employs an almost identical tying joint in its bent system.

Earth Day 2011: An Invited Article For Building Moxie

2011-04-23T10:36:00.000-07:00

Recently, I was invited by my good friend Jb Bartkowiak to contribute an article to his community-oriented Building Moxie: The Do Together Daily commemorating Earth Day 2011. Needless to say, it was a great honor and privilege to have been asked.

The article, entitled Earth Day 2011: Three Simple Acts That Can Make A Difference, highlights relatively low-cost practices almost anyone can undertake to help achieve a greener, more sustainable world, in keeping with the Earth Day 2011 theme of A Billion Acts of Green. Please give it a read, and post any comments directly to the article itself. And I hope everyone is having a great weekend and holiday!

A Wonderful Note from The Timber Framers Guild

2011-04-18T16:41:00.000-07:00

Today, a wonderful note from the Timber Framers Guild, thanking me for my presentation at the TTRAG Symposium 2011 last week end, arrived in the mail. It was a total surprise, and provided just the sort of lift I was a bit in need of today. So I would like to say "thank you", in return, to Joel McCarty, Susan Norlander, and Dan Boyle for being such wonderful facilitators and hosts last week!

Oh Hawkins House, How Old Art Thou, Really?

2011-04-10T09:53:00.000-07:00

In recent times, I've found myself speculating quite a bit about the nature of my ancient home, and what it might have to say about the building practices of housewrights in the early New Haven Colony.

But now, some of these considerations actually have me questioning the exact age of the Hawkins house. My home is often claimed to have been built sometime between 1670 and 1675. The local land records say 1670. The Hawkins family genealogy says 1675, but I have found no particular justification for this date in their account. We do know, via the old town records, that the land on which Joseph Hawkins built his home was granted in June of 1670. We also know with certainty that the current day house was sold by the Hawkins family to the Gaynor family in 1853.

The Old Hawkins House, probably around mid-nineteenth century.

And we also have it on the word of Samuel Orcutt and Ambrose Beardsley, in The History of the Old Town of Derby, Connecticut, 1642-1880 (published in 1880) that Joseph Hawkins "...built a house where now the old Hawkins house stands, on Hawkins street, where he died in 1682" (p. 726). I'd previously taken this as confirmation that my home was constructed before 1682, and that Orcutt and Beardsley were asserting that the "old Hawkins house" was, more likely than not, the original home, albeit without having any definitive proof.

However, in re-reading this passage, I now think that Orcutt and Beardsley may have had their suspicions that the house on Hawkins street was built in more recent times, and their comment "where he died in 1682" was probably a reference to an earlier home (or perhaps just the Hawkins street location, generally), and not necessarily the current day house. But why would they have reached such a conclusion?

The Reverend Richard Mansfield house, c. 1700, Ansonia, Connecticut. A pristine example of a Second Period Connecticut saltbox.

A classic text, nearly as old as Orcutt's and Beardsley's history, is Norman Isham's and Albert Brown's Early Connecticut Houses, originally published by Preston and Rounds in 1900, and then republished by Dover in 1965. In it, Isham and Brown surveyed 29 ancient Connecticut homes, some of the earliest of which no longer survive today, and attempted to describe the general characteristics of homes built during the three major periods of Connecticut colonization.

There are many aspects of the current day Hawkins house's architecture and construction that suggest it's more a product of what Isham and Brown had defined as The Third Period of the New Haven Colony, roughly from 1700 to 1750.

First of all, the Hawkins house is simply too big to be a First Period (1638-1675) home, according to Isham's and Brown's characterizations. Homes of the First Period generally consisted of two rooms, Hall and Parlor, separated by the chimney bay, with the entrance and second floor stair in front of the chimney column. Although the front section of the Hawkins house is indeed configured in this manner, the house also has a rear section of nearly equal area encompassing both the first and second floors, defining a large kitchen on the 1st floor, and work rooms and additional bed chambers on the second floor. All this without the lean-to extension typical of Second Period (1675-1700) saltboxes. The Hawkins house plan, therefore, is consistent with the design of a Third Period home.

The beefy central attic joist in the Hawkins house holds the midsections of adjacent end-bay tie-beams together, using a half dovetailed joint at each end. The vertical boards fastened to the left side of the joist create a partition wall that divides the front section (hall and parlor) of the house from the rear section (kitchen area). Second floor and attic joists run longitudinally, and there are no summer beams, except under the first floor.

Also missing from the Hawkins house are the massive summer beams found in most First Period homes, which, in Connecticut, typically spanned the two end bays from the chimney girt to a cambered wall girt at each end, respectively, defining the joist system of the 2nd floor. Instead, Hawkin's house joists in the end bays run longitudinally from chimney girt to wall girt on the 2nd floor, and likewise from tie-beam to tie-beam under the attic floor. The only summer beams are found in the first floor system, visible from the cellar.

The Hawkins house also has a 10" roof pitch, in contrast to the much steeper pitches used by First Period New Haven Colony carpenters, according to Isham and Brown. The roof system does, however, include collar ties, something often missing from later period New Haven Colony homes.

These points really hit home for me while attending the Timber Framers Guild's TTRAG Symposium 2011, last week in Danvers, and Topsfield, Massachusetts. Jack Sobon mentioned to me that, in addition to its basic plan and size, many of the apparent framing simplifications exhibited by my house were typical of later period homes. Several others mentioned that the lack of bracing in favor of heavy sheathing, and the absense of traditional English tying joints in the post/tie-beam/plate connections, also seemed indicative of a later period home. Jack suggested conducting a dendrochronological survey of the frame, to attempt to verify the true age of the house. Thanks to a rather large, accumulated database of wood core samples, modern dendrochronological dating can be extremely accurate, sometimes as close as one year. So, as you can imagine, this is now a part of my survey plans.

Where post, tie-beam, and plate all come together, a relatively simple tying joint is used in the Hawkins house frame. (The Mansfield house in nearby Ansonia uses an almost identical joint).

On the other hand, my Guild colleagues also showed considerable interest in the design of the simplified tying joint used in the Hawkins house frame, whose internal geometry I have yet to completely determine. Both the Hawkins house and nearby Rev. Richard Mansfield house appear to share this joint. Several attendees professed being unfamiliar with this particular style of joint, and concluded that I might've come across a New Haven Colony vernacular design that was worthy of further investigation. So, of course, I plan to continue with that, as well.

Is it possible that the current Hawkins house is a latter day extension of an earlier home built by Joseph Hawkins? That's certainly possible, but I have yet to find any hard evidence of a conversion. I think it more likely that some descendant of the early Hawkins family decided to build a new home, either on, or near, the site of the original home. If that's true, what happened to the original home is anyone's guess.

Snow Screed...Or, How To Float A Big Fluffy Slab

2011-01-29T08:30:00.001-08:00

Screed: noun \ˈskrēd\ 1) A lengthy discourse (e.g., personal account, or rant); 2) A leveling device drawn over freshly poured concrete [Source: Merriam-Webster]. A screeded concrete surface is usually finished with a float. For this article (which itself is a screed), snow is the metaphorical concrete, the North wind is the screed, and the float is, well, ... an actual float.

January 26^th-27^th brought us yet another intense winter storm. In our area, the storm dropped about 14"of snow – not quite as much as we'd received two weeks ago. But the total snow accumulation for the month of January was about 52", setting a record for the snowiest January here since 1965. And cold temperatures ensured the older snow stayed around, so accumulations both on the ground and on the tops of structures were quite deep.This caused numerous collapsing roofs here in Connecticut, and many folks are making efforts right now to remove roof-top snow.

In a previous post, I'd written how my home faces north-west, the same direction (more or less) that winter storms tend to blow from in this area. My main roof has a 10" pitch and presents a large profile to the wind, causing lots of snow to blow over the ridge and get deposited on the rear and mud room roofs. Furthermore, the front of the house blocks wind at lower levels, often causing a large build-up of snow on the entry porch roof and in the front yard. So I wasn't totally surprised to see this after the storm:

Needless to say, I'm glad I sistered the columns with 2x6 Ts before the winter. They're not in the greatest shape these days, but I hadn't had time to properly replace them in the fall. The mud room roof also had much snow, and my first priority was to get both porches cleared, which I can safely do with a shop broom from overlooking windows. But what really worried me was the cumulative snow on the back main roof:

Furthermore, the current forecast calls for more snow next week, or possibly even rain. So I really wanted to remove as much of it as possible. I needed something like a roof rake, but with about a 40' extension. I'm not sure roof rakes actually come that long, but it really didn't matter, as no one around here actually stocks roof rakes, and supplies weren't expected until sometime the following week.

But it turned out I had something easily adaptable: A four foot magnesium concrete float and several sections of aluminum shaft that screw together. I ran out to Home Depot and bought a few more sections so I could get the total length I needed. A bit pricey, yes, but I was determined to get this all done as quickly as possible:

First thing I had to do was remove the attachment point from the float, re-orient it 90 degrees, and bolt it back on:

Then, I angled the attachment point at about to about 45 degrees, and screwed one of the aluminum sections on:

My reasoning was that this would enable the float to ride up over the surface of the snow on the up-stroke, and then anchor into the snow on the down-stroke, thus breaking chunks of snow free. I collected everything together, and then headed out to the back of the house:

Not long after, my good friend and nextdoor neighbor Gary Farrell came over to see what I was up to (I think he probably realizes by now that I'm a little crazy). Gary grew up in the Hawkins house, which his family had owned since about 1853, and he had been the steward of the place for a good many years until I bought the house from him in 2007:

While Gary watched with some curiosity, I made my first attempt to get the float up and anchored in the snow just above the eaves. Only two shaft sections were attached. It wasn't quite as easy to do as I initially thought it would be. Once I got it in place, I attached a third section:

It took six sections to get the float just beyond the ridge line, at which point, the float tilted a bit, requiring me to push it a bit higher and spin the shaft to straighten it:

Meanwhile, Gary went back to clearing his side porch roof. I was a little leery watching him up there, hoping the porch roof was strong enough to support his weight and all that snow. I offered him to try out my experimental method, but he seemed quite content to continue with what he was doing (like I said, he knows I'm crazy -- everybody does :-) :

But soon enough, I cut my first swath of snow with the float. I found that shimmying the float would easily dig it in, and then a slight up and down undulation loosened the snow and released a small slough:

Once I had cut the first swath, I drove the float upwards again and attempted the next one (you can see how some portions of the first few sloughs settled on the mud room roof):

Then, I momentarily anchored the float up on the ridge, and took a minute to rest (and snapped this photo, too, of course), while the float waited patiently:

Next, I worked the float over a few feet and began cutting the next swath:

Controlling the float was tricky and took quite a bit of practice. Sometimes, the float would want to veer off to one side, and I'd have to move quickly across the ground (not easy with a lot of deep snow underfoot) and get back under it to make it stop:

In general, the more surface snow removed, the more challenging the float became to control, as it would want to slide across the exposed lower slab, which was hard-packed and icy:

Another point of difficulty was the need to occasionally add or remove a section or two of shaft, depending on how high the snow was where I was standing, versus where I was trying to get the float positioned on the roof:

In this case, another pair of hands was indispensable, and Gary provided me quite a bit of help in getting the job done (in addition to taking some good action pics):

Toward the end of the afternoon, I managed to remove most of the upper layers of snow from the roof. In the photo below, I only needed to clear a bit more snow from the vicinity of the main stack vent, which was effectively buried. But I stayed well clear of the rake line, given the float's tendency to slide sideways:

Needless to say, there was a lot of new snow on the mud room roof. I went back inside and removed it from the safety of the windows. Only I needed a shovel in addition to the shop broom, because this fine, sloughed-off snow had set-up hard (in fact, exactly in the same manner that slough sets up like concrete after an avalanche in the mountains). There was also a lot of displaced snow all around the perimeter of the mudroom and house, which now needed to be removed:

But at least it wasn't on the roof any more, and I had no further concerns about additional precipitation during the coming week.

Some Important Points on Safety and Property Damage

Despite my relative success with this project, I don't necessarily advise my readers to attempt the same. There are a number of risks associated with undertakings such as this one, and although I was able to eliminate or minimize the major ones, this might not always be possible in another person's situation. The major risks include, but are not limited to:

Potential for electrocution. Aluminum is an excellent conductor of electricity. Sending a long aluminum shaft aloft while standing in wet snow could be a very dangerous thing to do in the presence of overhead wires (e.g., power company service drop, or feeder to an out-building), or any other sources of electric power. In my case, there were no electrical wires nearby, and my service drop is clear on the opposite side of the house. Had it not been, or had I needed to clear snow from the front roof, I would've requested the power company to shut my power off first, and not resume service until I told them I had completed my work. Otherwise, I never would've attempted this. On the other hand, there are several outdoor light fixtures just beneath the eaves where I was working, but I de-energized their circuits beforehand. Note that a roof rake with a wood, plastic, or fiberglass shaft is arguably safer, but still shouldn't be used in the vicinity of live wires, or any other electrical sources or fixtures. Remember: That shaft is going to have a continuous stream of water dripping down its length, and on to your hands and body.

Damage and/or injury from falling snow. Even though these falling sloughs were relatively small, we were surprised by the impact they made hitting the ground. There should be no bystanders (especially small children) or easily damaged property, in the fall zone. Furthermore, if conditions are right -- fresh snow, or fresh snow over a consolidated, older layer of snow, and a very steep roof – you have the potential for triggering a small avalanche, in which more snow than you're expecting can suddenly free itself from the roof. The reason why I used so many extensions, in fact, was to deliberately distance myself as far as possible from the falling sloughs.

Damage and/or injury from the shaft/float. As I mentioned earlier, the float was difficult to control, and had a tendency to slide sideways, as the extended shaft is not very rigid. Again, no one should be in the fall zone, nor at either end of the house. There is also a potential for the butt end of the shaft to hit you in the face or body, if not properly controlled. Finally, rain gutters and nearby windows are also at risk for damage.

Damage to roof shingles. It would be easy to tear or knock off more than a few shingles doing this. In my case, I had good reason to believe there was at least one hard, base layer of snow covering the shingles, and took care not to penetrate it.

Build-up on other structures. As one reader pointed out in a comment, care should be taken to avoid too much snow building up on the roofs of smaller, attached or nearby structures. Be mindful of where the cleared snow is going and what it ends up resting on.

Physical injury. I found this work required far more physical exertion than shovelling heavy snow from a side walk. I wouldn't recommend it to any one who wasn't in exceptional shape.

The bottom line here is: If you're concerned about the quantity of snow on your roof, please hire a licensed and insured contractor to remove it!

Postscript [8 February 2011]

Since writing this article, it's become apparent to me that I could make the float less damaging to the shingles by attaching door weather stripping, or a section of foam pipe insulation, to the bottom edge.

Epic Snow Storm of January 11-12, 2011

2011-01-16T23:31:00.000-08:00

During the first half of last week, prodigious snow storms hit both the South Eastern and North Eastern United States, dumping record amounts of snow in both regions, and causing general shut-downs of businesses, schools, and transportation. Here in New England, Connecticut was hit particularly hard, with snowfalls in some locations approaching 30". My own Derby/Seymour/Shelton area was officially reported to have received about 17" of snow. I have to say that, during the my entire life here in Connecticut, I don't recall ever having seen quite this much snowfall from a single storm.

Several good friends of mine in the South took some interesting photos, and graciously shared them with me to publish in this article. Let's take a look at a few:

Sean Lintow Sr. of SLS Construction in Cullman, Alabama, took this photo of falling snow the night of the storm, and reported a final coverage of about 4" the following morning:

Here's an image from the next day, with some thankful birds foraging around Sean's bird feeders:

At the same time, Allison A. Bailes III of Energy Vanguard received about 6" of snow in Atlanta, and took this photo displaying the accumulations he encountered the following morning:

As gentlemen with a common interest in the problem of home energy conservation, both Sean and Allison took advantage of this weather to publish some interesting articles on using roof top snow to visually assess the relative air sealing/insulating efficiencies of local homes. You can find Sean's article here and Allison's article here. Give them a read -- and I guarantee you'll find yourself checking out roofs the next snowy day!

Meanwhile, a little farther west in Arkansas, Beth Taggard of Living A Quotable Life also received quite a bit of snow from the same storm, and took this beautiful photo the next day:

Beth said her big misgiving about it all was that she didn't have a Taunton to ride over the snowy surfaces!

Now, let's take a look at the results of my own snow storm here in Derby.

The photo below shows my home the afternoon following the storm, when the street was reasonably clear. The corner of the house closest to the camera points almost due west, and prevailing winds during the storm were more or less also out of the west. So this side of the roof actually received very little snow (much of it was blown over the house and onto the other side). If you zoom-in on the photo, you can see some interesting wind-scored undulations on the roof and this odd, continuous bump of snow running just parallel to the rake line:

Of course, the very same strong winds at lower levels drove snow up against the house. As you can see, the deepest snow literally beat a path right up to my front door:

And somewhere beneath all this heavy snow-plow-induced effluvia is a side walk just waiting to be cleared:

The wind-driven snow that accumulated along side the house came to rest in some interesting patterns and wildly varying depths. In particular, note the huge mound just alongside the house, and the interesting clump on the stone vase. You can see more wind-scoring on these surfaces, if you look closely enough:

The scariest part (for me, anyway) was seeing all the massive accumulation on the rear roof. All that snow which had been blown over the ridge had settled deeply on the rear roof, as well as the roof of the mudroom. I wasn't all that concerned about the snow-loading on the main roof itself -- it certainly experienced far worse in its lifetime (e.g., any one recall stories of the infamous blizzards of 1747-48 and 1888?), and the roof system as a whole is still sound and in good shape. But notice that my vent stack was nearly buried! The mudroom, on the other hand, concerned me greatly, because I'd never seen it loaded so much before, and wasn't sure how much it could really withstand:

Portions of the roof of the old cow barn out behind the house also got considerably loaded up:

Here's a good photo of the snow accumulated on the mudroom roof. Note the sagging rain gutter (scary!):

Naturally, my highest snow removal priority was getting both the mudroom and front entry porch roofs clear of snow. And no, I certainly wasn't going to go out there -- fortunately, there's a sufficient number of windows overlooking either roof to safely lean out of and simply clear the snow with a shop broom. Here's a view of the mud room roof, after I removed the bottom sash from one of the windows:

And here's the first swath of snow I cleared using my broom:

At this point, I suddenly found myself concerned about uneven loading of the roof, so I subsequently removed one 6" layer at a time to clear the rest. But not before measuring the snow at its deepest point, which was just about 18.5" deep:

Interestingly enough, the front porch roof didn't seem to receive any more snow than it normally does after a typical winter storm. I suppose this likewise owes to the carrying of much of the falling snow at higher elevations over the roof and on to the lee side of the house. So this roof cleared off fairly easily:

Of course, when I headed back outside through the back door, this is what greeted me:

Followed by this (somewhere under all this snow was yet another pavement, oh, and most of a park bench, too):

But I certainly wasn't going to bother clearing any of this. What would be the point? So I just consigned it all to Mother Nature and simply trudged through the deep snow, making my way toward the front of the house, where I finally cleared the front pavement, steps, and porch deck (I didn't bother taking many more photos at this point, though):

Then, I cleared the remaining sidewalk free of all snow-plow throw-off, from this point, all the way down to the Hawkins Street bridge, a distance of about 70 paces. The snow was deepest along here, with the surface generally aligning somewhere between my knees and hips:

I cleared the path all the way down to the south-west terminus of the bridge, and cut an egress right at the corner where street and bridge meet:

Needless to say, I was quite tired and cold at this point, but felt I'd accomplished quite a bit.

Postscript

Cold temperatures allowed all this snow to stick around, and we were subsequently hit by another snowstorm which dropped about 3-5" of white stuff, covering what was already there. Here's the path I had previously shovelled out heading toward the bridge:

And here's how things looked following this subsequent snow fall:

But none of this compares with the record breaker we finally received on January 27th, which will be the central topic of my next post!

Winter Solstice and Eclipsed Full Cold Moon

2010-12-20T07:17:00.000-08:00

A full lunar eclipse on a winter's night. From the Bilder-Atlas der Sternenwelt, ca. 1888 [Image source: Wikipedia Commons]

If you haven't heard about it already, this evening (Monday, December 20th) and the wee hours of tomorrow morning will collectively play host to an interesting convergence of three astronomical phenomenon: The winter solstice, the Full Cold Moon of December, and a total lunar eclipse.

The winter solstice (literally, "sun stop") marks that point in time when the sun's apparent southerly traversal along the horizon halts before it reverses direction. This winter, the solstice takes place on Tuesday, December 21st, at 6:38 PM EST -- not actually at the same time as the eclipse, but on the same day, nonetheless.

Tonight (Monday, December 20th), the moon rises just before dusk, at 3:39 PM EST, and the initial (partial, or penumbral) stages of the eclipse begin around 1:32 AM EST on Tuesday morning. The eclipse will then begin to enter its stage of totality around 2:40 AM EST, with complete totality being achieved around 3:17 AM EST. Truly inconvenient for us easterners, but hopefully a little more agreeable timing for those of us closer to the west coast!

Finally, the moon officially becomes full at 3:13 AM EST on Tuesday morning, a mere 4 minutes before complete totality occurs. This particular full moon is known as the Full Cold Moon, a name that goes back to early Native American tribes of the northeast. In fact, each full moon of the year has a traditional name, generally descriptive of the season, and often related to planting or the conditions of the food supply at the time; for example, Full Harvest, Full Snow (or Full Hunger), Full Sturgeon, Full Buck, and Full Hunter, to name a few. An full listing and description of all the full moon names can be found at Farmer's Almanac.

Also, the National Geographic Society has published this excellent article on tonight's eclipse. Apparently, the last time this happened was back in 1638!

So, hopefully, skies will be clear, and temperatures not too inhospitable, for good viewing in your neck of the woods. Get yourself a flask of hot cider and some warm clothes, and get out there and enjoy the view!

Trivets and Tulips: Some Oddities Found

2010-10-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

Not that long ago, I came across a couple of unexpected artifacts in the house, and thought I'd share some photos here.

The first items are an old iron trivet and carpenters stamp. I found both in the deep recesses of the attic. The trivet has a design I've seen numerous times before on antique trivets, and the stamp is a number "6" or "9", depending on how you hold it. I have no idea how old either is:

The other item is an old tulip cover, sealing the flanged opening, or "tulip", where a stove pipe once led into the chimney. The cover is located in the second floor chimney bay. Again, I am not sure how old it is, nor how long it's actually been there, although it's probably been in its current location for the past 60 or 70 years, when the house's wood stoves were most likely removed. The design on it is particularly intriguing:

I have yet to search under all the attic floorboards, so who knows what other interesting things might still be uncovered? And I also plan to do non-invasive, sonogramic investigations of each of two original, plaster partition walls on the second floor. Given that one of these walls defines what was probably the old borning & sick room, it wouldn't surprise me if it held a pair of concealment shoes for protecting against evil spirits. Now that would be an amazing discovery!

Celestial Dramatis Personæ for the Upcoming Week

2010-09-18T23:50:00.000-07:00

Those of you who enjoy observing the heavens should find the upcoming week (starting Monday, September 20th, 2010) particularly interesting, as a number of significant astronomical phenomena will be taking place. Furthermore, these events will be converging on several, traditionally important calendar days.

Jupiter has been especially brilliant during the evening hours all this past year. In my own area, it currently rises around 7PM EDT (just at dusk), and by about 10PM is easily seen as the brightest "star" above the eastern horizon. On September 20th, Jupiter will make its closest approach to earth in its current trajectory -- the closest it's been, in fact, in almost fifty years.

And, together with the planet Uranus, Jupiter will be at opposition to the sun on the 21st. The two planets will then be in conjunction on the 22nd, the autumnal equinox -- the first day of fall, and traditionally the celebration day of the harvest, or "Harvest Home". You can watch both planets parade across the sky together on these evenings, although you will most likely need binoculars or a telescope to view Uranus.

The next evening, September 23rd, will mark the Jewish holiday of Sukkoth, and feature the Full Harvest Moon in conjunction with Jupiter. Also, Venus, which, as of late, has been quite bright, but very low on the western horizon, just after sunset, will achieve its greatest brilliance that evening.

Finally, on the following week, September 29th will mark the feast of Saint Michael, one of the four "Quarter Days" of the early Christian calendar that was considered to more or less coincide with earlier, Celtic celebrations of the autumnal equinox.

Epilogue

It's interesting to note that Jupiter's close approach to earth in 2010 coincides with the Quadricentennial of Galileo's discovery of the moons of Jupiter in 1610, a concrete, scientific observation he was ultimately forced to disavow on threat of being burned at the stake by church authorities. It's also personally interesting to me that Galileo died in January of 1642, a mere three months before the birth of Joseph Hawkins. Makes me feel that these events of the distant past were perhaps not really all that long ago, after all.

If you'd like to read further about these forthcoming astronomical events or find rise/set times for your area, visit the Old Farmer's Almanac's Astronomy page. You can also follow the almanac on twitter: @almanac. If I manage to get any photos of these events, I'll post them here.

(Galileo's signature)

On Sustainability, Old Home Renovation, Smart Grids, and Kitchen Gardens

2010-09-17T14:48:00.000-07:00

Staying On-Grid, Part I: A Hybrid Approach to Sustainability is an article I recently published on Building Moxie: The Do Together Daily that illustrates my philosophy of old home renovation with regard to sustainable energy and conservation. This applies, of course, to the Hawkins house, which is my preeminent project in this area. A companion article, Staying On-Grid, Part II: A Call to Arms to the Citizen Farmer, completes my vision of a greener world by building a case for wide-spread, sustainable food production at the door-yard scale. Check 'em out!

Fourteen Miles to New Haven

2010-08-08T15:42:00.000-07:00

Today, I finally made good on a promise to my friend Pam at Farmhouse Primitives to publish a photo of an old colonial milepost situated alongside U.S. Route 1 in Stratford, Connecticut.

Back in January, Pam posted an excellent article commemorating Benjamin Franklin's birthday (January 17th, to be precise). With great interest, I read how Francis Lovelace, the second colonial governor of New York, established an early postal trail between New York and Boston, in 1673 (right around the time of construction of the Hawkins house). This trail eventually became known as the Old Boston Post Road, a roadway anyone living in southern Connecticut is generally familiar with.

Pam's article then goes on to describe how, starting in 1753, and at various times up until the Revolution, Benjamin Franklin helped lead the development of a highly efficient and reliable postal system throughout all of the colonies. Franklin was ultimately appointed Post Master General by the Second Continental Congress in 1775, and today, our modern U.S. postal system is generally attributed to Franklin's efforts.

Ben Franklin's "14 Miles to NH" milepost on the Old Boston Post Road, in Stratford, CT

I grew up in Stratford, Connecticut, on the other side of my block from U.S. Route 1, which the Old Boston Post Road is now a part of. While growing up, one of the oddities we encountered every day walking to and from school was this small stone monolith inscribed with "14 Miles to NH" (New Haven), shown in the photo above.

Local history has it that this stone, sitting just a few yards from the curb of Route 1, was a milepost established on the postal trail at some point during Franklin's administration of the continental mail system.

Almost completely forgotten by our local, collective memory, it's amazing that this milepost has sat here for so very long, largely unnoticed and, for the most part, unscathed by time, weather, and nearby development. And as a young lad in grade school, never had I dreamed, of course, that one day I'd be inspired to write so much about this very odd, and very old, stone.

(This article is cross-posted in Plantation by the Sea)

Article on Old Square Nails

2010-07-26T11:41:00.000-07:00

Recently, I published an article on old square nails, their merits, modern equivalents, and applications, on the Building Moxie blog: Yes, Virginia, They Really Do Still Make Those Old Square Nails. Hope you have a chance to give it a read!

Period-Correct Thermal and UV Protection (Sort of, anyway)

2010-06-13T14:17:00.000-07:00

Every window in my home is a vintage window. None is original, as the true originals are all long gone. But nonetheless, my windows are all still very old. My sashes consist of pegged mortise and tenon joinery, with thick muntins arranged in 9/6, 12/8, or 6/6 patterns of lights. Not a single one of my window frames is completely square, nor does any sash tightly fit its frame.

Every one of my twenty-three windows leaks air like a sieve, and is in need of much general repair, including repair of nearly all the sills and exterior casings, complete re-painting (including the safe and legal removal of deteriorating layers of lead paint), and re-glazing of all the panes. Perhaps now, you can fully understand exactly why I love this old home so much!

One of the oldest windows in the house is the small 6/6 in the second floor spinning room.

Of course, not a single window is to be replaced. My preservation ethic requires me to ensure these windows will last another 200+ years. But I am also determined to resolve their various functional and performance deficiencies, as well. There's just no way around that -- I need to have a comfortable, livable, and energy-efficient home. And yet, this must be done in a manner that minimizes impact on historically-significant structures and materials, even if it means more work or greater cost in the end.

Naturally, air leakage, and a general lack of insulating properties, are two significant challenges offered by my old windows. Another is UV protection for the interior of the home. There are several areas of the house -- the south side on the second floor, in particular -- where the solar assault on the interior is pretty intense. A partial solution might be to replace existing panes with new ones of treated glass. That would be fine for broken or cracked panes, but I am unwilling to systematically replace all the ancient bubble-glass. And furthermore, that strategy wouldn't address the insulation issue.

Installation of the left-hand side bracket of an insulating roller shade.

Of course, the simplest and most obvious form of sun/UV protection is a shade or blind. However, I already have primitive window treatments (including things like fish tail swags and tobacco cloth panels) that suit the house, but generally don't mesh well with shades or blinds, and certainly provide no protection. (In the winter time, I tend to replace some of these with heavy, single-draw linen swags, which do a good job insulating, but really aren't pleasing for summer use). So what to do?

Well, I finally concluded that an insulating roller shade -- yes, a roller shade, something I've never been a big fan of -- could actually provide a serviceable solution to the thermal and UV problems, while not detracting too much from the historical window treatments. This could be accomplished as long as the roller shades are mounted high and sufficiently recessed, so as to be obscured by the existing window treatments, while also providing as small a gap as possible between shade and window. Recessing the shade requires an inside mount, if possible, or cutting small mortises into the upper rail casings in situations where an outside mount is a better choice.

So, the particular type of roller shade I selected is comprised of insulated weaver's cloth and is available from Country Curtains in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Insulation is provided by a thin, white foam backing on the side of the fabric facing the window that is claimed to protect against both heat and cold. They're a bit on the pricey side, but I found them to be very well made. I initially sized and ordered just a few shades to start with.

Using a combination square to align the depth of both ends of the roller.

The first window to attempt this history-respecting renovation on was the small 6/6 window of the second floor spinning room, which tends to get a lot of sunlight until about mid-day when the sun is finally over the house. This window is illustrated in the first photo above. The closest fitting roller shade is the smallest one made, and is 22" wide -- too wide to actually fit between the jambs with the mounting hardware installed as intended. But a wider shade mounted on the outside would've interfered with the existing swag and iron curtain rod. So this would take a little creativity to get it to work.

I found I could get the shade to fit inside if I reversed the left-hand bracket before fastening it to the window jamb. The other end of the shade then fit snug against the jamb without a bracket. Once the shade was more-or-less positioned in place, I used a combination square to get the shade parallel to the upper rail, and both ends at the same depth (yes, I am that fussy about this stuff). This is illustrated by the second and third photos, directly above.

The pulley housing on the right-hand side of the shade has a slight taper and lip toward the bottom on each side, so I figured two pan-head screws over each lip, and one at the top of the housing, would adequately support this end of the shade. I used a punch to mark three screw locations around the perimeter of the pulley housing, as shown below:

Marking pilot holes.

Next, I temporarily removed the shade, and used a hand driver to drill three pilot holes. I almost invariably use a driver to manually drill small pilots, rather than an electric drill, which in this case wouldn't have fit here, anyway:

Drilling pilot holes.

Finally, I replaced the shade and drove the three screws supporting the pulley housing, and the shade was secured:

The right-hand side of the roller shade mounted, sans supplied mounting bracket.

The photo below shows the installed shade in its lowered position. A nearly perfect fit:

Well, not exactly a perfect fit. If you look at it straight-on, you can see that the lower, left-hand side of the shade is skewed away from the window jamb, while there likewise is a gap between the jamb and the upper, right-hand side of the shade. This is because of the shape of the window frame itself...it simply isn't square and there's not much to be done about that (it is, after all, what it is). Fortunately, the roller tube of the shade can easily be shifted left or right, so at least I was able to get the best possible coverage of the window:

The photo below shows the lowered shade with the fish tail swag back in place. Also, I put the artwork back after installing the shade. It does not, in my opinion, look half bad:

In the next photo below, the shade has been raised, and as you can see, it is nearly completely hidden by the swag:

From the other side, only a bit of the roller shade is visible. I think I could easily hide it if I were to fold the swag a little better. The draw string is unavoidably visible, but so be it:

So I've declared this particular experiment a success, and will continue outfitting the remaining upstairs windows with these roller shades. Not only will they protect against UV and keep the upstairs rooms cooler in the summer, but they should also provide a degree of thermal insulation in the winter. They certainly won't prevent air infiltration, but once that gets resolved, lowering the shades at night will at least help isolate the cold surface of the window from the warm air moving through the room. Note that the more problematic challenges I'm facing, such as repairing the windows and frames, and getting them relatively air tight, will be reported in many more blog posts to come.

Resources and Further Reading

Yagid, Robert, "Should Your Old Wood Windows Be Saved?", Fine Homebuilding Magazine (No. 210), May, 2010, Taunton Press, Newtown, CT.

Poole, John, "Tobacco Cloth Curtains and Other Developments," September, 2009.

Poole, John, "Wintertime Window Treatments," January, 2009.

Window Covering Safety Council

Postscript: Edge Seal On Insulating Shades

There was a good Q&A submission in the December 2010 edition of The Journal of Light Construction regarding the effectiveness of insulating shades and curtains. In response, contributing Editor Paul Fisette emphasized the need to ensure that edges of such shades are sealed when drawn. This prevents warm air from leaking past the shade and hitting the cold glass surface, diminishing the effective R-value of the insulator while also causing condensation on the glass. Such condensation could eventually cause damage, especially for wooden windows, like mine.

The roller shades I'm using don't operate with tracks on the side edges (few do), but I think I could still achieve a good edge seal if I built out stops for the lower sashes that were in continuous contact with the shade when drawn. Doing so might require the stop to gradually taper from bottom to top. Providing a thin film of felt or foam on the stop where it comes in contact with the back of the shade might also help, as well as weighting the bottoms of the shades slightly. Most of my windows don't have stops in the first place, believe or not, and constructing them is part of my plan for general window repair, anyway.

I'm also going to investigate some tracked solutions as well, however, including window quilts, since the roller shade solution mentioned above won't work where my walls lean inward (yes, very old homes sometimes have a few walls like that!). Did I mention there might be some thermography testing involved in this effort, too?

Postscript: Miscellaneous Views of the Spinning Room

While writing this post, I thought I'd share a few pictures of the 2nd floor spinning room. In the distant past, this room was most likely used as a utility room for general indoor tasks, including the spinning of flax into thread (hence, the name). When I first purchased the house, I decided I'd make this room into a quiet refuge for reading and relaxing. The adjoining southeast bed chamber, on the other hand, became my main office, and included all my computers, networking gear, several small book cases, and my favorite large trestle table.

However, I've now reached a point where my ongoing inspection and mapping of the house frame, as well as other restoration tasks, require me to evacuate the southeast chamber. So I recently moved everything into the spinning room. It's a cozy fit, to say the least, but it's only temporary. And it's not quite that bad.

Here's a view from one of the front bedrooms. The trestle table is my main working desk and computer table, with my Linux workstation caddy-cornered between the trestle and small side tables. I actually enjoy the eclecticism of mixing old with some new (is this colonialpunk futurism, perhaps?):

A view from the other direction. The traditional-looking writing table against the opposite wall is actually a traditional-looking piece of modern furniture:

I keep one of my favorite books on my desk, supported by a forged iron book holder. It's a reprint of Joseph Moxon's classic The Art of Joinery, annotated by Christopher Schwarz of Lost Art Press. This book was first published in 1678, just a few years after my house was built:

Various objects on my writing table include an ink well and pounce pot, candle holder and snuffer, @CaffeinatedLiby's hand made compass book mark, my Rubini gold sweep oar paper weight which I picked up at a Head of the Charles Regatta, and a copy of the Hawkins Mechanical Dictionary, published by Nehemiah Hawkins, ca. 1909:

Also, my signed copy of Chris Schwarz's annotated The Joiner and Cabinet Maker, and an antique-looking clock:

One of the samplers hanging on the wall. This one is entitled "Mary Follet, Her Work, Aged 12, 1802." I particularly like this one because the characters and scene look almost like something by William Blake:

Another sampler: "On Virtue." This is a nice piece that looks similar to a primitive home blessing:

Finally, I have a large map chest that I use as a credenza to store papers and working documents. My funky primitive iron lamp with the punched willow tree shade sits on top:

~~FIN~~

Entry Porch Rescue, Part II: Shoring Things Up

2010-06-05T23:52:00.000-07:00

The Problem

In the previous posting, What Damage Hath Water Wrought, I described how water infiltration gradually rotted the bases of the two columns supporting my front porch roof, effectively detaching the bases from the infrastructure, and how heavy snow-loading this past winter apparently forced both columns to spread slightly. This posting provides an account of the steps I took to temporarily stabilize the undermined columns. I went to work on this immediately after discovering that the column bases had shifted, and most of what's described here was accomplished in the better part of an afternoon.

Right now, I am planning a complete overhaul and rebuilding of much of my front porch infrastructure, which has certainly seen better days. About thirty five years worth of wear, insects, sun, snow, and rain have all taken their toll, and it's time to get this porch back into sound shape. However, I couldn't drop everything and immediately get started on this larger effort. So instead, I did the best I could to immediately ensure the near-term safety of the porch.

There were two objectives that needed to be accomplished right away:

1) Get the columns back to their original positions, and prevent any further movement.

2) Ensure the columns themselves could still safely support the roof.

But a constraint I wanted to adhere to was to achieve all this in situ; that is, I had no desire, say, to jack the roof up and begin splicing new column bottoms. That sort of effort could wait until the larger repair effort. I just wanted to shore everything up for the time being without removing or replacing any of the existing structure.

With all that in mind, I set about doing the following....

The Rescue

The first order of business was to prop the decking up in the vicinity of each column and construct something of a stopping block to ensure that each column base couldn't possibly get knocked forward or laterally to the side. So I wedged two PT 2x6s between the edge/ends of the decking and the slab:

You can see from the photo below that this had the effect of making the decking reasonably level again, and well supported in the vicinity of the column. I secured the 2x6s by sinking long exterior grade screws through each 2x6, right through the fascia, and into the PT 6x6 corner post beneath the porch, which appeared to be in sound condition despite all the damage above it. I joined the two edges together with screws, as well:

Next, I built up a second "half box" on top of the first, likewise securing both its joint and connection to the lower half-box with screws. Then, I nailed several angles over the joint, just for added strength:

Of course, I built an identical stopping block wrapping the column base on the other (south) side of the porch, as well:

I temporarily wedged some 1x scraps between the stopping blocks and the front and outer side of each column. Now, there was no chance of either column base getting accidentally knocked outward and off the decking. So once this was all in place, I gently pushed (actually, tapped) the column bases back to their original positions. This went reasonably well, considering the uneven decking around the columns and the deteriorating column siding and post bottoms:

Once each column was more or less where it was supposed to be, I fashioned a shear plate by cutting a notch in a length of PT 2x12 to fit around the column on three sides. The purpose of this plate was threefold: To prevent movement of the column in three directions (the front was handled by the scrap block inserted between the column and the upper stopping block), to effectively tie the separating decking boards back together via insertion of screws, and to provide a stable base for a vertical "T" to ensure support of the column:

Once the plate was in place, I sunk several courses of screws into it, making sure that the plate was joined to both the rim joist and the nearest decking joist, just to make sure the plate wouldn't move. Other screws simply served to hold the decking boards in place.

Next, I set about constructing a T as a sister to the column. For this, I joined together a 2x10 and a 2x6 to form the T, cutting notches in the tops of both to accommodate the knee braces of the columns. The top of the T would butt against the overhead bearing beam, with the bottom resting on the plate. One of the notched 2x10s is shown below:

The bottom of the T would be toe-nailed to the plate with screws. Two sides of the T would also be fastened to the column via screws sunk into the inside post. While cutting the lumber for the T, I had been debating whether the T ought to be independent of the column, or joined directly to it. Keeping it independent would've required a positive connection between the top of the T and the bearing beam above, and I didn't want to start sinking fasteners into that beam.

So I decided instead to attach the T to the column along its length. Doing so hopefully would make both T and column a cohesive, unified whole, stronger than the column had been by itself. This was based on my assumption, of course, that the inner post above the column base was sound. Drilling a number of probe holes confirmed that it most likely was. I was also making an implicit assumption that the connection between column and overhead beam was also sound, but I could find no evidence to the contrary. The photo below shows the T as viewed from above, looking down toward the supporting plate:

And below is another view of the dreaded "Flying Dutchman" after the assembly and joining of the T. Note the scrap block wedged between the stopping block and forward face of the column:

Although I didn't believe it totally necessary, I attached another T to the column at the south end of the porch. This column appeared to have far less damage than the north one, but it also had moved farther away from its original position. I felt it prudent, in any event, to likewise sister this column with a T:

A nice view of how the T on the south column butts up against the bearing beam while not interfering with the knee braces:

....And a view of the base of the T on the south side, where I joined it to the supporting plate (I took this photo before I re-attached the railing):

In the interest of having a strong, cohesive column structure, I also added some angles to make sure the outer trim and inner post were all one, but in retrospect this was really unnecessary. All in all, the solution appears to be sound. It's not nice to look at, for certain. But it's not too obtrusive either. And it's only temporary until I rebuild the infrastructure properly:

Epilogue: The 100 Year Porch Project

As mentioned previously in this posting, I am planning a comprehensive overhaul of my front porch this summer. Naturally, I would like to retain as much of the original structure as possible. However, as a relatively recent addition, the front porch is not that historically significant, compared to other parts of the house. Furthermore, it's an exterior structure exposed to the elements, necessitating periodic repair and replacement of componets. So as a preservationist, I have no difficulty in replacing as much of the porch as necessary to ensure both its safety and utility to me as a home owner.

I have absolutely no intention, however, of eliminating the front porch altogether and replacing it with a more historically accurate pediment, as some had suggested I ought to do. The front porch adds tremendous comfort to anyone using the front entry way in bad weather. And despite its small size, it provides a rather nice place to hang out on sunny afternoons.

What I do have every intention of doing, however, is engineering the new porch infrastructure to last as long as possible with regular annual maintenance. This will include the use of highly rot resistant natural materials and incorporation of modern design techniques for water-resistant structures. My preferences tend toward things that not only are well made, but also possess maximum utility and last a very long time. My front porch is no exception to this ethic. So I refer to this rebuild effort of mine as the "100 Year Porch Project," and will present the overall design and construction strategy for the replacement infrastructure in several upcoming postings.

'Til then.....

(Disclaimer)

Entry Porch Rescue, Part I: What Damage Hath Water Wrought

2010-05-26T15:19:00.001-07:00

My house has a rather unusual front entry porch. Unusual, perhaps, in the sense that it has one in the first place. Most homes of its era have relatively simple entry ways, almost invariably defined by a pediment and a pair (or two) of pilasters, and an occasional transom. Some very nice examples can be seen here. A very old photo of my home, in fact, seems to reveal just such a pedimented front entry, although the image admittedly is dark and difficult to make out.

A view of the Hawkins house front entry porch.

So, my front porch is clearly a relatively new addition. My guess is that it was built either in the 1940s or 1950s, probably following the laying of the new foundation. It is of relatively simple construction, with subtle Victorian and transitional nuances. The previous owner, whose family owned my home for many generations, told me that the last major overhaul and repair of the porch infrastructure took place in the 1970s.

Architectural features include a boxed bearing beam, scalloped knee braces, and a tongue-and-groove ceiling.

The decking consists of 5/4 x 3 tongue-and-groove boards, probably Douglas fir. They are unfinished and very weathered, but generally in good condition, except for the exposed ends. The railing consists of simple linear balustrades.

The single biggest issuing facing my front porch is water damage. Except for its sloping deck, the relatively simple form of my porch exhibits very few elements of water-resistant design. It's obvious that the porch roof never even had a gutter system attached to it. Not even a drip edge under the shingles.

There's quite a bit of warping and splitting in the end grain of the decking boards. You can even see one large chunk lost to rot. Fortunately, the slab and steps appear to be sound. But there's no handrail! (A flagrant code violation in my locale).

Needless to say, it's a very wet porch in the rain and winter. The effects are obvious in the cupped, splitting ends of the decking boards, and in the deteriorating newel post bottoms. It was clear to me when I first bought the house that quite bit of the porch infrastructure and trim would need to be tended to at some point, and I had resolved to let the porch weather one last winter before I would finally deal with it this summer (2010).

A deteriorating and loose newel post bottom, and separating bottom rail. I temporarily braced the posts, and reattached the rails, with galvanized angles.

However, in the early spring, while taking a close look at the porch one morning, I noticed that the decking near each edge was separating, with the outermost boards being pushed slightly downward and over the edge. I also noticed a bottom rail detaching from one of the newel posts. It looked as if the columns had become detached at their bases and were spreading laterally across the deck, pushing the tongue-and-groove boards slightly apart. A simple test with a level confirmed that the columns were indeed out of plumb, with each base extending slightly outward.

I suspected that the column bases, or perhaps the decking just under the columns, had finally rotted to the point where fasteners were pulling out. A closer inspection revealed both conditions, to varying degrees. But what surprised me was the fact that none of this was obvious back in the fall. So I further surmised that snow loading this past winter (we had several heavy snow falls) must have forced the columns to move.

The column on the north side of the porch had the most rot. A large area of peeling paint revealed something of a Dutchman in the trim at the bottom of the column (yet even more suspiciousness, of course, as it suggests there had been problems here in the past).

The mysterious Dutchman (albeit, not a Flying Dutchman) that appeared in the spring. You can also plainly see the effect on the decking boards of the column movement.

Removing the Dutchman revealed a scary amount of wet, mushy, rotted wood. In fact, one could even well conclude that the bottom of the interior 4x4 post was mostly gone and that only the exterior 1x trim was supporting the column. (And the bottom part of the trim wasn't in much better shape). Probing with a drill revealed that the interior post was still solid about 8" above the deck.

Behind the Dutchman was a scary mass of rot. You can even see a corroded fastener near the bottom, right-hand side of (what had been) the interior post.

Needless to say, I quickly replaced the Dutchman, as I couldn't bear looking at it anymore. Some of the 1x trim, which was also soft in this area, broke away when I had initially pulled the Dutchman out.

The column on the south end of the porch was in much better shape. Probing revealed that the interior post was solid and dry nearly all the way to the bottom. However, the decking itself right under the column was rotted. In fact, the end of the board under the center of the column had broken free where it rotted, and I was able to easily extract it with my hand. The south column also appears to have traveled farther from its original position than the north column.

The column on the south end of the porch and the compromised tongue-and-groove just under it. Note the exterior trim splitting under the weight.

I subsequently crawled under the porch, and found all the structural members (ledger, joists, posts, etc.) in reasonably good shape. Apparently, the water assault had been borne by everything up above, and no significant damage had yet worked its way down. And I still need to get up to the roof and inspect the sheathing and bearing beam. But at least I've isolated all the lower infrastructure damage for now...

And The Moral Of This Story Is....

Porches and decks serve different functions and have their own sets of problems. But both are susceptible to damage caused by water infiltration. You should inspect your porch or deck to ensure that rain water adequately drains away from structural features, and that ventilating air can likewise flow freely to dry things out. You should also inspect your porch or deck each season for water or insect damage, and speedily correct any problems. And even better yet...hire a licensed professional to do all of this for you.

In all fairness, most of the major problems currently facing my house preceded me here. However, some are more serious than others, and in this particular case, I had been somewhat ambivalent about the relative urgency, believing that relegating corrective action to a scheduled event would somehow make everything okay. However, nature often has plans much different from our own, and I was just lucky to catch this one before things got worse.

In a follow-on posting, I'll show you the steps I immediately took to temporarily shore the porch up and ensure its safety before undertaking proper repair of the porch infrastructure.

Resources and Further Reading

Ermides, Chris. "The Rot Proof Porch", Fine Homebuilding Magazine (No. 212), July, 2010. Taunton Press, Newtown, CT.

Guertin, Mike. "Is Your Deck Safe? 8 Critical Areas to Inspect Every Season", The Best of Fine Homebuilding: Decks & Outdoor Projects. Summer, 2010. Taunton Press, Newtown, CT.

Lintow, Sean. "May is National Deck Safety Month". The Homeowner's Resource Center, SLS Construction. April 25, 2010.

The JLC Guide to Decks and Porches: Best Practice for Outdoor Spaces. The Journal of Light Construction. Hanley Wood, LLC. 2010, Williston, VT:

-- Katwijk, Kim & Linda. "Rot-Resistant Details". pp. 125-129.

-- Leeke, John. "Replacing Rotted Wood Columns". pp. 348-350.

-- Nicolazzi, Peter & Maureen. "Porch Repair From The Bottom Up". pp. 343-347.

-- Smith, Scott. "Site-Built Under-Deck Drainage". pp. 148-154.

Old Memes Never Die

2010-05-22T08:32:00.001-07:00

Recently, during some of my readings about life in the American colonies, I stumbled across the long forgotten origins of certain phrases we tend to take for granted in modern times. ~~Four~~ Five in particular struck me as interesting, so I thought I'd share them with you here.

"To and fro" -- Possibly handed down from the practice of using a tool called a froe to fashion roof shingles, siding shakes, or flat stock for cutting pegs, from cross-sections of trees called billets. A froe was a long, flat blade with an eye forged at one end, into which a handle was inserted. A mallet drove the blade into the billet and the woodsman's back and forth ("to and fro") rocking of the handle eventually freed a flat section of wood from the round billet. [Source: C. Keith Wilbur, "Home Building and Woodworking in Colonial America", Globe Pequot Press, Guilford, CT]

Illustration of a froe from Eric Sloan's "Museum of Early American Tools"

"One Fell Swoop" -- Most likely originated from the practice of clearing fields for planting by felling trees using a method called girdling. Instead of cutting trees down individually, the woodsmen would save time by cutting bands around each of a large number of trees, removing just enough wood to weaken them. The girdled trees formed a pattern called a swoop. A single tree at one end of the swoop was then felled, and if all went right, the remaining trees would topple like dominoes. [Source: This was my own conclusion, after reading the article "The Chopping Bee" in the April 2010 edition of Early American Life magazine]

Felling axe and silver maple

"Square Peg in a Round Hole" -- Or more precisely, "A square peg in a round hole makes for a poor fit". We often use this expression to refer to an ill-conceived idea or an improbable undertaking. However, it originates from timber frame construction and the use of large wooden pegs (trunnels, or tree nails) to tighten a joint between two large framing timbers via a process known as drawboring.

Pegs were generally cut from square stock that was in turn cut from billets using a froe (as previously described). The pegs were then rounded by using a drawknife to cut some number of sides to the peg. For instance, most pegs were made not completely round, but usually octagonal. Finally, a hatchet was used to put a taper on one end of the peg.

Were the peg left square, its edges would tend to cut into the opposing surfaces of the interiors of the drawboring holes, and not completely align the holes together. This would result in a joint that was less than optimally tight. [Source: C. Keith Wilbur, "Home Building and Woodworking in Colonial America", Globe Pequot Press, Guilford, CT]

My home seems to have an abundance of trunnels of varying degrees of roundness and squareness....

[Added on August 25, 2010]
"Dead as a Doornail" -- Old colonial batten doors were usually assembled by driving nails through the battens and boards and then clinching (or clenching) the nails on the other side of the boards. Clinching refers to bending the exposed portion of the nail shank over and then into the side of the board by striking it with a hammer. This was done to achieve the tightest possible fit, ensuring that the door would never loosen up. Soft, malleable iron nails, sometimes called clinch nails, were used for this purpose.

Old clinch-nailed batten door in the Hawkins house. You can see the clinched nails just below the top of the door, covered by layers of paint.

Recently, I learned from an article published by The Old House Web [Mark Clement, "Dead as a Doornail"] that the term "dead as a doornail" originated from the old practice of recovering nails and other precious hardware from the remains of burned-down buildings. Most nails sifted from the ashes could be re-used, but the door nails were not reusable, having been clinched. Hence, they were "dead" nails.

You can read further about the history and interesting properties of old iron square nails in my article "Yes, Virginia, They Really Do Still Make Those Old Square Nails", in the Building Moxie daily blog.

For an excellent illustration of the process of clinching (and the associated difficulties), see "Clinching Nails (Sometimes Teeth)" by Lost Art Press.

[Added on October 4, 2011]
"Basement" -- The massive bottom section of an old chimney column, which was situated, of course, in the cellar, was known as a "basement" in its day. Over time, "basement" became a synonym for cellar.
[Source: This was a bit of trivia related to us by Jim DeStefano, during his excellent presentation at the Timber Framers Guild's Traditional Timberframe Research and Advisory Group (TTRAG) Spring Symposium, in early April of 2011.

Epilogue
When the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins first hypothesized the concept of a meme as the unit of cultural propagation and descent (gene being its biological counterpart), he posited that some memes had better long-term survivability than others.

It's interesting how, in the particular case of the examples cited above, some memes survive by acquiring increasingly abstract, yet still accurate, meanings over the course of time and cultural evolution. By largely casting off their original, concrete meanings, these memes have establish a fecundity that ensures their continued use, not only in the present, but possibly even well into the cultural future.

So perhaps the moral of this posting ought to be "Old memes never die, they just abstract away..." :-P

Early Spring Images

2010-03-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

Well, it was still snowing up until about two weeks, but now, early signs of spring are appearing everywhere. The lilies have already begun sending their chlorophyllic solar panels skyward:

As have the multicolored crocuses:

On the other hand, my local neighborhood decorating consultant has apparently had a change in taste regarding the sort of window bottles I should be using this year in my home, replacing the sophisticated worldliness of Sutter Home White Zinfandel with the somewhat smokier, earthier appeal of Southern Comfort (see the past article Miscreants Decorated My Home, if you find yourself in the dark on this one):

It's a shame that these bottles are made of plastic. Otherwise, they actually might've worked out quite well alongside the Sutter Home bottles.

Over the course of the past three days, the spring weather turned particularly foul, as an intense Nor'easter bombarded southern New England and the greater New York Metropolitan areas, with huge amounts of rain and winds gusting upwards of about seventy miles an hour. Fortunately, Derby and the rest of the Naugatuck Valley were spared much of the damage that befell many points farther west of us.

Today was the first nice day in many days, with lots of sunshine and temperatures in the mid-sixties. I spent the late afternoon at the New Haven Rowing Club, and managed to take this nice photo of the Housatonic River from the boathouse, just as the sun was beginning to sink beneath the trees on the opposite shore:

The water was relatively flat, but moving quite quickly, and with lots of swirling eddies, as they were bleeding water from the Stevenson Dam this afternoon, just about a mile upstream. The next photo shows the view facing toward the downstream end of the dock:

All in all, not a bad way to end a gorgeous day -- enjoying the last rays of the warm sun, with a coffee in hand.

February Snows

2010-03-03T07:36:00.000-08:00

They say February is usually the snowiest month. That seems to have proven true this year, both here in southern New England and many other places, as well. Here are just a few random photos of the snow falls from last month.

February 16th

Snow actively falling on Hawkins Street. I like this photo because the flakes were large and very visible. This storm began in the wee hours of the morning and lasted throughout much of the day:

The side yard -- snow clinging to my red maple, dogwood, and pine trees:

The usual clearing of the entry porch roof, prior to shoveling the front walk:

February 26th

The predicted Snowmageddon of the decade turned out to be a real snoozer here in the Derby area, although points west of us certainly received quite a bit of snow. Not only did we get far less snow here than predicted, but it was actively melting and lasted only a short time on the ground.

Here's a shot of the side yard prior to my cleaning the walk...snow was already disappearing from the various surfaces:

As for blogging, I've been quite busy as of late with a number of pressing matters, and not very focused on writing. There's a backlog of about three or four articles in my head, and I hope to get them written over the course of the next week or so. Please accept my apologies for the recent lack of activity. But spring is coming, and hopefully better times just ahead for every one!

First Major Snow of 2009-2010

2009-12-20T15:12:00.000-08:00

We had our first major storm of the winter season last night, dropping about 8-10 inches of snow in Derby, by my own estimation. Here is the storm warning that was posted yesterday by the Valley Independent Sentinel, suggesting a potentially serious winter storm.

The photo below gives you a general idea of the quantity of snow we received, although much of what you see here is wind-blown accumulation, as this was the lee end of the yard during last night's blustery winds:

And there was, of course, considerably less snow in the vicinity of the back entry-way, given the protection of all the trees to the north:

But the south end of the yard, sitting in the lee of last night's winds, received much deeper accumulations (I know -- this is very boring discourse, isn't it?) :

One of the things that always concerns me whenever there's a heavy snow fall is the tendency of my front porch roof to get heavily loaded with snow. It worries me because I don't feel this structure is all that substantial, and fear too heavy a loading might bring about its collapse:

[ And note the interesting, wind-carved cornice on the south-side of the porch roof. This cornice never formed in previous winters -- at least, not since I've lived here: ]

So, naturally, one of the first things I do is clear the front porch roof following a significant snowfall. Leaning out the landing window and pushing it away with a shop broom is all it takes...

... and the porch roof is cleared.

The City of Derby, for reasons unknown to me, always does an incomplete job clearing the sidewalk on the south side of the Hawkins Street bridge, finishing just short of the west terminus, and turning the cleared path right out on to the street, rather than simply clearing about another forty feet to the beginning of my sidewalk. Any pedestrian heading this way (and there are a lot of them) either has to cross the street while still on the bridge, or walk the remaining distance in the road until they can get back on to the sidewalk:

So guess who invariably takes it upon himself to complete the job for the sake of his Hawkins Street neighbors? Yes, you guessed correctly. The completed path is shown below:

This season, I think I will finally write that letter to Derby's department of public works... :-)

Vintage Bird's Eye Views of Derby and the Old Hawkins House

2009-09-27T08:33:00.000-07:00

Recently, I discovered two bird's eye view illustrated maps of Derby, one from 1920, the other from 1898. Both are digitally archived by the Library of Congress. And each contains an image of the Hawkins house, situated at its present location, on Hawkins Street.

The first map, City of Derby, Connecticut, was published by Hughes and Bailey in 1920. While its illustrations are not necessarily drawn to scale, this map reveals a remarkable amount of information about the town, its streets, its buildings, and their relationships to one another.

Hughes and Bailey's "City of Derby, Connecticut" illustrated map (source: Library of Congress)

When I zoomed-in on the intersection of Hawkins Street and Seymour Avenue, I found a surprisingly detailed rendering of the Hawkins house. In the expanded illustration below, it is right at dead-center of the image. The house appears to be drawn largely out of scale with regard to most of the neighboring houses and other features, and I can not readily account for why it was drawn in this manner. The fact that the house originally stood on a large, raised foundation might have skewed the artist's perspective, while another possibility is that the artist considered it a significant landmark, and drew it out of scale to emphasize it as such.

Close-up of Hughes and Bailey's "City of Derby, Connecticut" map, showing the vicinity of the intersection of Hawkins Street and Seymour Avenue (source: Library of Congress)

Zooming even closer in on the house revealed a number of its most prominent features. The large center chimney is there, and is represented as being slightly offset from the ridge line, toward the back of the house. I know that this had, in fact, been the case, as it's obvious from the roof system in the attic. The raised foundation is also captured in the illustration, as are the three descending windows on the first floor of the south end.

Zooming further in on Hughes and Bailey's "City of Derby, Connecticut" map reveals an accurately detailed image of the Hawkins house (source: Library of Congress)

Finally, the three old homes directly across the street are also shown, with fairly reasonable spatial relationships to my home. The only significant error in this rendering is that the artist appears to have included a third window on the second floor of the south end, whereas in reality, there are only two.

The other map, published by Landis and Hughes, and entitled Derby & Shelton, East Derby, Conn. 1898, is shown below, with a red rectangle delineating the area of the intersection of Hawkins Street and Seymour Avenue.

Landis and Hughes' "Derby & Shelton, East Derby, Conn. 1898" illustrated map (source: Library of Congress)

Zooming-in on Hawkins Street reveals what appears to be the Hawkins house correctly situated between Tenth and Eleventh Streets, and generally in correct relation to the same three old homes on the opposite side of the street. However, the representations of the buildings themselves are rather boilerplate and lack any significant detail.

Close-up of Landis and Hughes' "Derby & Shelton, East Derby, Conn. 1898" map, showing Hawkins, Tenth, and Eventh Streets (source: Library of Congress)

My discovery of these illustrations -- the Hughes and Bailey map, primarily -- is significant in the sense that it tightens up a loose end in the history of the house; namely, the exact location of the original home site. While it is generally accepted that the house was moved to its current location in the 1950s to avoid the wrecking ball during the construction of Connecticut Route 8, there had always been some uncertainty as to where the house actually came from.

Although it had always ostensibly been associated with Hawkins Street (Samuel Orcutt's History of The Olde Town of Derby, for example, often states this to be the case), several nineteenth century cartographers failed to accurately record the location of the house on scaled maps. And, perhaps as a result of this, more recent architectural surveys of Derby missed the house entirely. This situation is, in fact, described in a Derby Historical Society article published just a few years ago. However, the Hughes and Bailey map strongly suggests that the present-day Hawkins Street location is also the original seventeenth century home site.

Right after discovering this, I thought: If this is the original site, then what traces of the old foundation might yet remain? And it suddenly struck me that I'd been staring at the old foundation all along, in the outline of the somewhat odd, modern concrete pavement currently surrounding the south-end and back of the house. It just never had occurred to me before that moment.

Above left: The ca. 1939 photo of the Hawkins house, with raised foundation extending out beyond the back of the house, a stone staircase, and an overhead awning where the mudroom is now located. Above right: The modern stonework surrounding the south end and back of the house appears to conform exactly to the outline of the previous raised foundation.

As you can see from the two photos shown above, the modern stonework aligns perfectly with the grade-level footprint of the old raised foundation. And the peculiar "landing from nowhere" abutting the concrete slab in the photo on the right almost certainly appears to have been the base of the old stone staircase shown in the 1939 photo on the left. My guess is that these modern concrete slabs are actually capping a large number of old dry-laid stones that had comprised the lowest-level courses of the original foundation.

So, my conclusion is that the Hawkins house had been re-situated at its original site when it was moved in the 1950s. Not only is this conclusion supported by physical evidence, but it is also consistent with claims by contemporary Gaynor-Farrell family descendants that my home had, in fact, been moved twice during the 1940s-1950s, with the first move relocating it to a point on Hawkins Street that today is somewhere within the vicinity of the east abutment of the Hawkins Street bridge. While the exact reason for moving the house to that particular location is not well-remembered, the location itself is still strongly upheld as such by the Gaynor-Farrell family.

Clearly, the second move of the 1950s simply returned the house to the location from whence it originally came, albeit to a modern foundation of concrete blocks constructed within the confines of what had been the old foundation, with most of the original, dry-laid stones having long been removed and taken away.

For a related article, see The Old Hawkins House.

Postscript
Since publishing this article, I've discovered yet another illustrated map of Derby, entitled Birmingham, Conn. 1876. The particular rendering of this map that I initially came across is printed on p. 6 of the Derby Historical Society's Images of America: Derby (Arcadia Publishing, 1999), and carries the label "Wilkinson Brothers & Co., Derby Paper Mills."

However, Randy Ritter, of the Derby Historical Society, informed me that the map had been created by O. H. Bailey, and that an online copy is maintained by the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center of the Boston Public Library. The 1876 map is shown below (and many thanks to Randy for the link).

Bailey's "Birmingham, Conn. 1876" illustrated map, with a red rectangle pin-pointing the location of the Hawkins house and surrounding homes (source: Boston Public Library)

Zooming-in on the vicinity of Hawkins Street reveals the Hawkins house and the various surrounding homes and structures. It's interesting to note that the large colonial house with double-ended chimneys that today sits directly across the street from the Hawkins house had not yet been built in 1876. This house is, however, represented in both the 1898 and 1920 maps.

Close-up of Bailey's "Birmingham, Conn. 1876" map, showing the Hawkins house and adjacent homes (source: Boston Public Library)

Another interesting aspect of the 1876 map is that it illustrates the gentle dip of land that once existed just behind the Hawkins house. Today, Connecticut Route 8 cuts through this area, just where the dip begins to drop more steeply (as shown in the old illustration), as a considerable amount of the original land behind the Hawkins house had been excavated away.

According to my neighbor Gary Farrell, his uncle, Len Gaynor, had had a herd of cows grazing on this land, as recently as the early 1950s. An old cow shed and stone wall still exist behind Gary's house, the only surviving remnants of those earlier times.

Hewing a Roubo Workbench Slab

2009-09-18T19:42:00.000-07:00

Some of you may recall that earlier in the spring, I began working in earnest (well, sort of) on a green-wood carpentry project to construct a Roubo-style joiner's bench from several large sections of a very old silver maple on my property that I needed to take down the previous year. This had become something of a background project that I'd regularly put aside for stretches at a time to honor more pressing commitments, and then return to whenever I found a spare hour or two.

Jacques Andre Roubo's bench, from Plate 11 of L'Art du Menuisier (ca. 1769)

This past week, I declared success in removing bulk wood from the large maple log that eventually will yield a slab for the bench top. A hefty cant (although I actually rather enjoy calling it a proto-slab) had finally emerged from the log:

So, on a brisk, but very sunny, early-fall afternoon, I began hewing (or, shaping) the cant:

For any one unfamiliar with the techniques and tools being described, the earlier process of bulk wood removal (scoring) was accomplished using a traditional felling axe to essentially slice away sections of wood within the boundaries of scoring lines drawn on the log. Scoring lines basically define the intended shape of the timber.

Hewing, on the other hand, also involves wood removal, but is more focused on defining and squaring-up the actual sides of the timber. This is accomplished primarily with a broad axe, which, compared to the felling axe, has a wider cutting edge, a much shorter handle, and is considerably heavy for its relatively small size. A broad axe is used, in general, to shape wood.

The photo below shows a face of the cant up-close. The face is oriented vertically, using an adjustable cradle that I had built specifically for this purpose. You can easily differentiate the hewed area on the left from the scored area on the right:

One strikes the broad axe about thirty degrees to the direction of the wood grain (not necessarily as shown in the photo above), using a series of short, well-controlled strokes. The cutting edge must be kept extremely sharp to avoid tearing the wood, as well as to minimize the number of strokes required to do the job. Since the axe head is quite heavy, you don't need to force the stroke that much; rather, just initiate the stroke and allow the weight of the head to do most of the work.

You do need, however, to use quite a bit of muscular effort to carefully control the placement and angle of the blade. So it can be rather tiring work. During the initial hewing, we're mainly concerned with clearing out the roughly scored wood and leaving just a reasonably clean surface. On subsequent iterations, we'll attempt to smooth and flatten the surface as much as possible, periodically checking it with a level or plumb-bob.

Of course, the ultimate goal is to shape the cant into a relatively flat and squared slab of wood suitable for fashioning into a precise bench top. This means that one face (the top of the slab) must be as planar as possible. The other face (the bottom) need not be that perfect, but it should still be reasonably clear. And at least one of the two lateral edges must be completely planar and at a right angle to the top so as to accommodate stock being edge-planed. So these are the requirements for true-ness that the hewing process ultimately needs to support (not to mention the countless hours of planing that will ultimately follow hewing).

In an effort to make this work as precise as possible, I cut a reference edge along one of the scoring lines at one end of the cant, and pared it down to a smooth, straight surface:

The reference edge provides a good, solid place to position a level or plumb-bob to ensure that the cant is always in the same orientation every time I return to hewing it. It's simply easier to hold the level against a squared piece of wood than attempt to align it with a drawn scoring line. Periodically, while hewing the faces, I'll check this reference edge to make sure its completely vertical, just in case the cant shifted slightly while being worked. I'll also check the area of the face I'm currently working with a plumb-bob to ensure that it's heading in the direction of relative planarity, with a parallel orientation to the reference edge.

If I happen to flip the cant over onto one of its faces, I'll likewise make sure that the same reference edge is completely horizontal as the cant lays in its cradle, adjusting or shimming the cant as necessary. I might then attempt, for example, to hew either of the edges into a vertical planar surface, or perhaps adze the exposed face to remove more material using a different group of muscles. As hewing progresses, I would expect to occasionally establish other reference edges at various locations on the cant, as well.

The photo below shows the reference edge. I used a small carpenter's hatchet to finish the edge to a straight line:

This next photo shows the hewed surface of the stem where the reference edge was cut. When you take great care to use the broad axe precisely, you can get a surface that is nearly as smooth as what could be accomplished with a hand plane. Although the photo might not do an ideal job revealing it, this is the case right in center area of the upper stem, where a rough oval of spalt can be seen. Note also the beautiful bands of colors (including the silver-blue) running through the surface of the wood. This will eventually make for a beautiful bench top when finally finished:

Yet another view of the cant is shown below. The face of the cant shown here (and in the preceding photo, as well) is destined to be the bench top, and the bottom edge (the edge the cant is currently resting on in its cradle) will be the front edge of the bench. This particular face was selected as the bench top mainly because the bottom edge exhibits far less sweep (or end-to-end curvature) than the top edge, and will be that much easier to straighten:

And since this edge will face the woodworker, it must be shaped so as to form a vertically planar clamping surface with the bench legs on that side. I also intend to fashion the smaller branching stem into a crochet for holding the far end of stock secured to the bench-front for edge planing. That should make for a very functional and also aesthetically pleasing feature of the bench.

The bifurcated area of the cant, where the two stems of the living tree had split-off from the main trunk into a Y-shape, was perhaps my single biggest motivation for using this particular log for the slab. In addition to providing a base for an integral crochet, I am anticipating that its additional mass will add to the overall heft and stability of the bench. And from a purely aesthetic perspective, the wood in such areas of trees often yields myriad unusual coloration and grain patterns, lending itself quite well to the creation of a unique piece of furniture.

So, it is for all of these reasons that I am constructing a bench top from a whole section of a silver maple, rather than assembling one from pre-fabricated slabs or milled lumber. Not to mention the fact that the tree had been in my yard for many years; hence, using it in this manner also provides quite a bit of meaning and relevance.

Tobacco Cloth Curtains and Other Developments

2009-09-08T19:49:00.000-07:00

Some primitive-style window coverings I had ordered arrived this morning at the house. These consisted of several tobacco cloth tie-up panels, and a pair of double-draw festoons. I purchased them from Farmhouse Primitives, and was very pleased with their customer care ethic, as they made an extra effort to ship them to me as quickly as possible. Since these coverings are only made on-demand, the orders naturally take a little extra time to fulfill.

The use of tobacco cloth as a window covering is something that has long intrigued me. Being a descendant of Georgia turpentiners and tobacco planters, I harbor something of a misplaced romanticism for the nicotiana tabacum, despite the long history of evils associated with its cultivation and use -- slavery and cancer, of course, topping that list.

Newly arrived tobacco cloth tie-ups adorning two front windows of the hall chamber. This room is currently empty due to my removing wall board and inspecting this section of the house frame.

Furthermore, my house had once been part of a large colonial plantation whose main product was tobacco. In the later half of the seventeenth century, tobacco was the big craze consuming Europe, beginning with the Portuguese, then the French, and finally the English. Many planters in the American colonies profited handsomely from growing tobacco and exporting it back to England. This was not only the case in the southern colonies, but here in New England, as well.

In fact, nearby Hartford, Connecticut, to this very day, has a reputation for being the shade tobacco capital of the world. As you're driving into Hartford on I-91, you'll see shade tobacco farms with large coverings of tobacco cloth stretched over the crops to protect them from sunlight. This had traditionally been the main use for tobacco cloth, although it was also used extensively for packing tobacco for shipment. It's various domestic uses in earlier times -- as a cheese cloth, for brewing tea, as window treatments, etc. -- are also well known. It's conceivable that centuries ago, tobacco cloth might have been used in the Hawkins House for these same purposes. Hence, it can be put to good use as a period artifact in my home.

Another view of the new tie-ups in the front windows. As the windows are somewhat small, the tie-ups look a bit large, but c'est la vie. I generally prefer coverings that hang close to the floor, anyway, and according to the weaver's instructions, they'll shrink a bit when washed in cold water.

Anyway, after unpacking my new window coverings, I wanted to try them out immediately. I am still not totally sure where they will ultimately go, but the hall is a definite possibility. The parlor is another. Since I was working upstairs anyway, I decided to place them in the hall windows. Some of you may recall a post from last winter, where I found that heavier linen drawback festoons -- by the same textile manufacturer as the tobacco cloth coverings, by the way -- made a good winter time covering for these windows, as they provided a decent block between the cold column of air hovering about the windows and the rest of the warm air circulating through the room.

However, as nice as the heavier linen festoons are, they simply carry too much material and some how just don't seem to fit the house well in the summer months. It looks like these tobacco tie-ups, on the other hand, are a perfect substitute: They are light and airy, and still have a primitive style to them that suits the house quite well. So I am definitely going to be utilizing these tie-ups and similar lighter coverings in the warmer months.

The third tie-up on the larger 12/8 window on the end wall of the room. Unfortunately, there was a lot of sun light coming in, so the photo is a little washed out.

I also ordered a pair of left- and right-sided double-draw festoons, which are heavier than the tobacco cloth, but still a bit thinner than the heavy single-draw linen festoons. According to Farmhouse Primitives, these coverings are based on an early 1800s design. I liked these very much as well. They are probably going to end up in the dining room, where I am currently considering introducing a lot of red fabrics (runners, table squares, etc.), anyway.

One the double-draw festoons in the same window. Again, the large quantity of sunlight unfortunately backlights the festoon and reveals its draw-pull mechanism. But the downstairs windows are darker, so these should work just fine downstairs.

On another note, you may have noticed that these are some of the first interior photos of the house showing exposed timbers in one of the main rooms. The reason why is because I have finally initiated a systematic, detailed inspection of the entire house frame, something I had planned to do for a long time, but given the effort involved, had habitually postponed.

However, my recent discovery of termite damage in one of the front posts motivated me to re-prioritize and begin this lengthy inspection and assessment now, rather than putting it off any further. I anticipate this process lasting throughout the fall and well into the winter months, but it will also provide a lot of good fodder for further blogging. So expect many more postings on this topic as this effort builds momentum!

Wherever I am, my tools are never far away. Here, I was using the level essentially as a large straight-edge with an attached protractor to measure how close my posts are to being plumb. The interior post in the background leans a whopping 5 degrees toward the south end of the house, while the partition wall itself leans several degrees in the other direction (need I be concerned...???)

Reel Mower Madness

2009-08-29T08:30:00.000-07:00

We're very green here at the Hawkins house. Partly because I've always been something of an environmentalist, and perhaps also in part because of the centuries-old spirit of self-sufficiency and parsimony that seems to still hover about the place. Face it. In colonial America, people had no choice but to do things in what might be called "green" or "sustainable" ways, simply because there were no other ways back then.

So this past spring, in accord with those sentiments, I ordered a reel mower from Lee Valley Tools. A reel mower is essentially the modern, light-weight, high-tech equivalent of those clunky old cast-iron, hand-powered mowers that you might have had the pleasure of using many decades ago.

I have to admit I had my doubts about how effective even a modern version of a hand-powered mower could be. But even if it enabled me to simply reduce, if not eliminate, my use of a gas-powered mower through out the course of the summer, I felt that would be a positive thing. I don't know about you, but I can't stand a pleasant summer evening being ripped to shreds by the sound of a gas mower, no more than I can stand the sound of snow blowers on what should be a peaceful winter's morning.

The mower arrived packed in a cardboard box that was disarmingly small in size:

I brought the box into the mud room, and opened it. The mower also came with a grass catcher that hangs off the back of the mower and handle, but its capacity seemed so small that I never even bothered attaching it. (Though I subsequently found it useful for catching trimmings when the grass isn't very high):

The reel mower and all its parts, organized on the mud room floor:

Assembly was no big deal. The only tools I used were my knife (just to open the packaging) and a spinner with a 7/16" socket. A total of four machine bolts needed to be inserted and nuts tightened, and two clip rings put in place by hand. That was all:

The mower is extremely light - you can easily pick it up by the handle and carry it outside. When not actually cutting grass, the mower can be pulled backwards without the blades being turned. I found that, with a little bit of practice, you can also easily pull the mower around the lawn by flipping it completely over onto its small wheels. That helps to keep the blades out of the way when transporting the mower over hilly terrain:

The mower also stows very easily - it can stand almost completely upright against the wall, and easily fit into a corner of a garage:

Sharpening - What I did discover is that, contrary to claims in the product literature that the mower's blades are sharp enough when delivered from the factory, the blades really needed to be well honed before initial use. I found them just too dull on the first try, and quit my first attempt at cutting grass to hone the blades.

Now, sharpening the blades on this thing involves a rather bizarre process. At least, it seemed bizarre to me at first. But it's actually quite sensible when you understand why you need to do it in this manner. But first, let's go over the sharpening process itself, and then we'll return to why it must done this way.

I ordered the mower with an optional sharpening kit. If you choose to buy this mower, you really need to get the sharpening kit. You can't do with out it. The kit consists of an angled handle that you insert on the pinion that drives the rotating blade assembly off one of the mower's wheels. You have to turn the mower over and place something on the handle to keep it in the position shown below. Then remove a wheel, lift the small gear off the shaft, and carefully insert the handle over the shaft, being careful not to displace the small woodruf key that the gear sits on:

Next, you apply a lapping compound to the outside edges of the rotating blades. The lapping compound is a highly viscous gel that contains some sort of grit suspended in it. Once all the outer edges of the blades are coated, you use the handle to rotate the blade assembly in the opposite direction from the way it normally turns when cutting grass. The owners manual says to do this for about 5 minutes, and the lapping compound eventually changes color as the gritty particulates get used up:

So why this bizarre process? It turns out that there are actually two sets of opposing blades on the mower: There's the cylindrical, rotating assembly of blades, but then there is also a stationary cutting blade. The rotating blades apparently catch the blades of grass and force them against the cutting blade, which produces a shearing effect. In this sense, the reel mower is superior to most conventional gas mowers, in which a single cutting blade tears at the grass, rather than cleanly shearing it:

However, the rotating blades and cutting blade are shaped to fit together perfectly in order to work. In fact, the blades actually, and ever so slightly, come into direct contact with one another:

During the sharpening process, the blades are forced to move past each other in a direction opposite to that of cutting. And their mutual contact causes each type of blade (rotating versus stationary) to sharpen the other. Think about it - when you sharpen a knife or tool with a whetstone, you re-shape the cutting edge by moving the blade against the stone opposite to the normal direction of cutting. And that is precisely what is happening here. In fact, the grit in the lapping compound effectively transforms each opposing blade into a whetstone for the other.

So, my main advice to anyone purchasing a reel mower like mine is to keep the blades exceedingly sharp, and furthermore, respect this sharpening process. If you attempt to sharpen these blades in any other manner -- for example, using a stone, or one of those steel sharpening tools that you might use on the single cutting blade of a conventional gas mower -- you will most likely ruin these precisely engineered cutting surfaces, and severely compromise the mower's ability to deliver a clean, shearing cut.

Here's a photo of my side lawn, where the grass was quite tall, and I was able to cut consistently clean rows. The actual performance of the mower is certainly more than acceptable (and higher than I had expected) for a hand-powered tool:

The one thing the reel mower seems to have difficulty with are weeds with large diameter stems. Unlike grass, their tough stems seem just too resilient to get grabbed by the rotating blades, and they often manage to evade the reel mower. Sometimes, you can manage to cut them by making several, full-speed passes over them. But not always. In this case, one must be content with going back to the garage for the weedwacker and making a final pass over the large weeds:

Finally, when finished, it's a good idea to thoroughly clean all the metallic surfaces, and give them a light spray of WD-40. Personally, I like to use an air gun to clean the blades, but a soft synthetic brush or a rag would work just fine. (I happen to love my air tools, by the way, and am always looking for an excuse to use one of them, anyway).

So, my final conclusions are that the modern reel mower is an excellent alternative to a noisy, air-polluting gas-powered mower, most of the time. If you decide to go this route, you might not want to retire the gas mower altogether - in my opinion, you're still going to need it on occasion, especially if you go for extended periods of time not mowing the lawn, and have to deal with very tall, thick, or damp grass.

But the reel mower is more than sufficient for the average situation when you're routinely mowing a reasonably well-kept yard. If you manage to reduce your usage of the gas mower to once or twice or three times a season, that's a big plus for the environment and the general peace and quiet of the neighborhood. And also remember that you're still going to have to rely on that weedwacker for those large stemmed weeds that the reel mower just can't seem to consume. But chances are, you're going to have to use that weedwacker for fine trimming, anyway, so hopefully taking a few extra paces about the yard shouldn't prove too onerous.

Conjunction of Moon and Jupiter

2009-08-06T21:30:00.000-07:00

Conjunction of the moon and Jupiter, August 7th, 2009, at 12:10AM EDT

There was a spectacular conjunction of the moon and Jupiter this evening. I managed to catch the above photo by laying prone on the sidewalk, using the sidewalk surface to steady my camera, with the exposure setting adjusted for night time / no flash, and using the timer and holding my breath to prevent the camera from shaking (my tripod just wasn't handy tonight).

Another photo of the celestial pair, peeking through a cloud-roughed sky. You can see Jupiter just on the tip of a wispy peninsula of cloud.

Jupiter has been plainly visible for many months now, usually fully risen by about 10:30PM EDT. It's the brightest "star" in the sky, and is easily spotted above the Eastern horizon in the early part of the evening. Hope you manage to catch it some night!

Miscreants Decorated My Home

2009-07-05T21:37:00.000-07:00

Some one -- I have no idea whom -- occasionally discards a few items of trash in the extreme end corner of my yard, near the side walk. This doesn't happen all that often. But it's invariably the same collection of stuff, namely a few empty 4.5 oz. bottles of Sutter Home white zinfandel, and an empty Newport cigarette pack. Perhaps some young person in my neighborhood simply finds this a convenient place to jettison the spoils of a pleasant evening stroll before returning home. But in any event, this has been an infrequent, but consistent, phenomenon over the course of the past few years.

Sutter Home white zinfandel and Absolut Apeach bottles reposing in the shade of one of my pine trees about two days ago.

In the past, I'd simply curse a little, pick the bottles up, and drop them in my recycling bin. However, during my last clean-up of the yard, it struck me that these bottles are precisely the same kind I'd pay money for in an antique shop, as small decorative window bottles for floral clippings.

I had just collected a total of four Sutter Home bottles, as well as the small Absolut bottle shown in the photo above, when this revelation struck. I peeled their labels off, soaked them in a bucket of hot, soapy water for a while, and then used a Scotchbright pad to remove the sticky residue left behind by the labels.

The cleansed, de-labeled bottles in my dining room. One has water and a few herbal cuttings. The others look strangely deformed, but it's just the light refracting on their surfaces. The Absolut Apeach bottle has an interesting orange-peach color to it, though it's clearly sprayed on, and some of it came off with the label.

The result was just as I had hoped; they worked perfectly well in their new role as window bottles. They're just the right size, and look great in the sun. And since they're clear glass, having a little color is simply a matter of adding some food coloring to the water.

The Sutter Home bottles nicely fit in this tin bottle base, which I had purchased a while back from a place called The Country House.

Placing the wine bottle between two of the broad-necked bottles that originally came with the base also makes a nice arrangement.

So, whomever you are, public drinker & litterer, who occasionally deposits your refuse in my yard, I'd like to thank you for contributing in a small, but meaningful way, to the beautification of my home. And on the odd chance that you happen to be reading this blog, I'd like you to know that it's okay to continue leaving small wine bottles under my pine tree, as long as you don't break anything or cause any mischief (and I actually don't think you ever will). But I could, however, do without the Newports.

Just a random shot of a corner of my dining room.

Miscellany Of Weeks Past

2009-05-19T22:33:00.000-07:00

Spring is in full bloom here in Southern Connecticut, and I've been dividing my time between numerous projects here at the Hawkins house. Unfortunately, that hasn't left much time for worthwhile writing, but I feel long over-due to post something, so here's some photos taken over the past couple of weeks and accompanying commentary. And I'll try to publish a more purposeful and coherent posting or two during the next few days. In the meantime, hope you enjoy the few random snippets here...

This is my garden armillary sundial, which is quite nice. You'll notice, though, that it's gnomon is missing both it's arrow head and tail. About two seasons ago, this sundial took an unfortunate fall from a garden wall, breaking both pieces off. Fixing it is no big deal -- just a matter of cutting two appropriately sized pieces of 1/4" brass rod, threading each end, and screwing it all back together. But it's one of those bothersome small tasks that just doesn't manage to get scheduled. The sundial is going to be the centerpiece of my forthcoming colonial herb garden at the house, so maybe that will provide me enough incentive to finally fix it. Maybe.

Since my location is 41 degrees N. latitude, I used a protractor to angle the gnomon at precisely 41 degrees. The gnomon needs to point true North and align with the earth's axis for the sundial to work properly. Not too imprecise a measurement, eh?

The future site of the hypothetical colonial herb garden. This part of the yard gets nearly constant sun through out the day. The garden will be situated on the opposite side of the path, just this side of the decorative grass, and replacing the patch of crab grass in the foreground. It will be bordered by 4 x 4 cedar posts, and feature two small foot paths through the center, emanating from the sundial:

Close-up of the decorative maiden grass in the side yard, and all the grape hyacinth and lilies that appear in the early spring. This photo was taken a good number of weeks ago. The hyacinth and lilies are actually gone now, and have been replaced by these white perennials that I cannot readily identify. It's an interesting dance that takes place here every springtime. Yet another (small) project of mine is to complete the encirclement of the grassy patch with a large assortment of perennials, so there's always something interesting going on through out the entire spring, summer, and early fall:

The early springtime ritual of planting annuals in hanging baskets is shown in the next few photos. This year, we planted red and yellow marigolds, yellow pansies, and some dark purple flower whose name eludes me at the current moment. I was going for somewhat contrasting colors this year, just for kicks. (Oh yeah, there's a couple of herbs there, too; rosemary and basil):

Hanging baskets in various stages of completion. The mums I had planted last fall survived the winter and are growing like crazing now (all green -- no flower buds for a while yet). So I will have them to re-display in the fall time:

A completed large basket:

Two of the larger baskets deployed on the entry porch. Since this photo was taken, I've also installed two candle lanterns on each of the front posts supporting the roof:

Newly planted herbs and tomatoes, respectively, in wooden containers on, or in the vicinity of, my front porch. These plants are patiently waiting for me to finish digging the potagers and herb garden, of course, and are demonstrating their enthusiasm by growing bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and...

This photo shows stone remnants of an ancient terraced garden that is mostly buried by earth and covered by various growth out behind the house. There are a number of interesting, random plants still thriving out there, including some roses and rasberry bushes, not to mention lots of poison ivy! One of my big summer projects is to resurrect this garden, but there's just so little time. We'll see how far I get. If I can get even the basic garden unearthed and well-defined, I would be satisfied with it for this season:

This buckboard table graces the other end of my mudroom. Can you believe that some one in my neighborhood had left this out curb-side to be taken away with the trash? I was driving by one rainy night in my pickup truck and noticed it's outline in the street light (I know, it sounds like a sad story of hyperbolic abandonment, doesn't it? But it's true!) I stopped, threw it in the back of my truck, and it's been a fine friend and fellow traveler ever since:

Lavendar and chives (container herbs) are flowering right now (I took this photo just yesterday). They are likewise awaiting their move to the big hypothetical herb garden in the side yard, with armillary sundial, cedar borders, and well-defined paths. We'll see...

And what posting of outdoor activities would be complete without some mention of the various animal friends who like to drop by on occasion and try to figure out what manner of weirdness I am currently occupying my time with?

Here, one of the neighborhood cats came visiting out behind the house, and hung out for a while by the old overturned wheel barrow and deteriorating saw-buck:

And here, one of those ubiquitous crows was gingerly walking down the drive way, inspecting things (perhaps keeping an eye out for the cat). I was actually amazed how far he trotted along on foot before finally flying up into the trees. I took this photo from the window of my study, through the old glass -- hence the noticeable blur just in front of the crow. The old stone wall in the background is an ancient remnant of the cow farm that once existed here, up until about fifty years ago.

There are many interesting trees in bloom right now, including dogwood, lilac, red maple, and various pines, plus many other annuals and flowering shrubs. Almost exactly one year ago, I created a posting with photos of many of these blooms. If you're interested in viewing further, you can see that posting by clicking here.

Kale by Numbers

2009-05-05T15:38:00.000-07:00

[Gardens, or yards, as the inhabitants called them, were stored with gigantic plants of Kale or Colewort - Scott (Waverly)]

This past winter, I attempted an experiment in wintering kale, in which I covered three plants with a natural mulch, and then let nature take its course. The plants spent a good deal of their time under layers of snow, in sub-freezing temperatures, for this past winter was a rather severe one by coastal Connecticut standards.

One plant didn't survive and I found it rotted in the springtime. Another appeared to have been eaten by something (perhaps those two marauding squirrels who also sought refuge from the cold in my attic?). But the third plant survived just fine. In fact, it looked down-right bright and healthy, for all it had endured. So I removed it from the ground and placed it in a large plastic flower pot. This is how the kale looked exactly two weeks ago:

And this is how it looked today:

Yes, we've had quite a bit of warm, sunny weather the past two weeks, and also quite a few rainy days. In fact, the past three days have seen nothing but rain, and things are just growing like crazy!

But I have never seen kale looking quite like this ever before . When I purchased this plant last fall, it was more cabbage-like than anything else. But now it has taken on the appearance of a true flowering plant. My guess is that it will flower in another month's time and go to seed. I have read where kale, which are not good hot weather plants, get into a distressed state as soon as the weather warms up, and then produce their seeds.

In any event, I'll be watching this guy closely, and with any luck, I'll have a nice brood of new, young kale to border my front pathway come the fall. Of course, I will do my best to keep this plant alive during the hot summer, even storing it down in the cool basement during the hot weather, if that will keep it from withering.

Here are two more somewhat random photos. Below are various collards that I purchased recently, which are also growing like mad with all the sun and rain. I am in the process of planting a total of three gardens this year -- two potagers, and a colonial herb garden. The collards will, of course, go into one of the potagers, along with various other edible plants that I am likewise growing in containers until ground is broken:

And this is an antique dry-sink in my mudroom, which I use for various planting activities. The dry-sink still has its original copper liner, which is quite an interesting piece of metalwork and also very convenient. In the nursery tray below, I've planted two types of large garden beans, sequoias, and dragon tongue (36 of each):

Naturally, these beans will go into one of the potagers after they've matured in a few weeks. To support the beans, I'm constructing natural tuteurs from some old maple branches that I've collected and am right now peeling and whittling down a little. They should like quite nice once they are in place.

Vintage Percolator

2009-04-23T23:22:00.000-07:00

My mom has an old percolator that had belonged to her and my dad. Last Sunday, I went over her house to do some garden and yard work for her, and I cooked her a big Sunday breakfast, brewing dark roast coffee in the percolator. Needless to say, I just couldn't resist taking a few photos of it, and posting them here. It amazes me how so very few people nowadays even know what a percolator is, never mind how one goes about using it to make coffee! In my opinion, nothing tastes better than freshly perked coffee.

For those who are unfamiliar with this simple, but effective, piece of technology, there is a strainer sitting on top of a hollow tube. The tube has a flare at the bottom. Ground coffee is placed in the strainer, and the strainer-tube assembly is lowered into the percolator, which is filled with fresh water. You put the lid on and then place it over a flame on your stove top, and as the water begins to boil, it "perks" up through the tube, is caught by the little glass plug on top, is deflected back down into the strainer, flows through the coffee grinds, and then drains back into the percolator's main body. And after a few minutes of that, you have the best imaginable tasting coffee in the world!

My parents' percolator spent many, many years in the same old pot closet, and has numerous dings in its sides from all the times larger pots and pans had either crashed into it, or it accidentally fell off a shelf and down on to the floor. In the photo below, you can see some of the worst of these dents. You can also see gradations on the side near the handle, that allow you to determine approximately how many cups you're going to brew, by measuring how much water you've put in:

This next photo shows the front of the percolator, and its slightly dented spout:

Few people today use percolators. It's really a shame, in a way, especially given all the emphasis these days on great tasting and exotic coffees. Of course, you can still find suppliers of new percolators online, as well as vintage percolators for sale. But for the serious caffeine lover, there is just no better means of preparing a great tasting cup of coffee!

[And by the way, this posting is dedicated to my fellow caffeine-addict and blogger, TheCaffeinatedLibrarian, who also shares my appreciation of old, vintage percolators! ]

Rock Me Amadeus

2009-04-13T15:54:00.000-07:00

Well, I sure hope the Easter Bunny was good to all of you. He certainly did well by me. Apparently, he knows what a fan I am of all things Enlightenment, especially the music of Herr Wolfgang. Not to mention that I also enjoy a good piece of chocolate just as much as the next person. So he rewarded me for my numerous forgiven misdeeds by supplying me with an excellent bar of feine milchschokolade, packaged as "Salzburger Mozarttafel" by Mirabell of Austria. As you can see in the photo, this chocolate bar balances perfectly against a large book, as long as at least the upper one-third of the bar is removed, so as to lower the center of gravity (I am not really sure where that chocolate actually went).

And as an added bonus, once I am done sharing my Easter present with most of my friends, I will have a very nice portrait of Amadeus to place on my future piano or harpsichord (assuming, of course, that I ever get my parlor squared-away).

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday and weekend! And now it's back to the grind...ugh....!!

Workbench Top Update

2009-04-07T15:50:00.000-07:00

I recently removed much of the remaining wood from the maple log that will ultimately form the bench top slab for the Roubo-style workbench that I am building for my shop. There are still quite a few high spots that I need to take down, but the bulk of the wood has been removed from this side. Only that Knot from Hell remained right in the center of the log. You can plainly see it in the photo below:

A view of the knot (and a few of the remaining high areas) from the other side:

This evening, I removed much of the knot by slicing away at some of the wood surrounding it, and then chopping the knot up with my splitting axe, being careful not to completely pop the knot out -- I don't want to be left with a gaping hole right below the line. Rather, I just want to get this bulge down before hewing this side of the log:

Here is the other view of the log, with the knot and bulge largely (though not completely) cut-down:

My next step will be to insert a few screws into the far side of the log to ensure that the existing splits don't open any wider -- I don't want a large portion of one side of the log to break off, although, if it did, I have a contingency plan for mitigating that. As things stand, this is going to end up being a "composite" top consisting most likely of two slabs (one large, one small), keyed together to provide an approximately rectangular bench-top. But I want to keep this main slab whole, if possible.

Once the screws are in place to stabilize the log (actually, I think it's officially a "cant" at this point, not a log anymore), I'll turn it over and score the other side (the bottom of the workbench slab). That should be a bit easier, as there's less material to remove from the bottom than there had been on top.

Crocuses in Connecticut

2009-04-02T14:31:00.000-07:00

Spring has definitely sprung here in Connecticut. I discovered several crocuses (croci?) in my yard the other day. They are identical in coloration to a crocus photographed by my blogging friend Shelley in Michigan, and posted here.

It was cold and raining all day yesterday and they remained closed (interesting, how they manage to protect themselves):

However, today was very sunny, and the two crocuses were opened:

The crocuses are right on the edge of what had once been a terraced garden in my back yard, that has long been covered over with earth and growth. This spring, I will be excavating and revitalizing this garden. There is also a nice apple tree growing right in the center that I'll prune and get into good shape, so we'll have plenty of edible apples come Fall.

Timbering, Part V -- Some Wood Removal

2009-03-31T15:49:00.000-07:00

This past evening, I completed cutting scores through the length of the log and then began doing some bulk removal of wood. Starting at the top end of the log, I worked my way down toward the butt-end, removing the wood left between the notches. In the crotch area (I can't write that without chuckling a little), the depth of the wood was fairly shallow relative to the line, and I had cut broad, shallow notches there. I removed most of this wood first, taking swings closely along the grain with my felling axe. All of this wood cleared fairly easily, leaving the promise of some very interesting grain patterns behind, including what looks like some spalting. This is exactly what I was hoping for:

However, I avoided removing too much wood right near the end of the stem on the left side of the log, being somewhat concerned about the large split emanating from the pith. That split has been there since the log was cut, but I don't want to disturb it too much with axe impacts, out of fear of making the split wider, or even breaking a large portion of the stem off. So instead, I'll remove the rest of this wood using a small hatchet, or even a chisel. I may eventually put a stainless steel screw through the stem to hold it together. Or, perhaps, if I really wanted to get fancy, a butterfly key made from a section of black walnut I've been holding onto for just such an occasion, inserted into the end of the stem and made flush. Any suggestions or other ideas?

The mid-section of the log was also very problematic, as it consisted of a large bulge and the vestigial knot of a limb that had been removed from the tree a long time ago. The wood in this section was very deep, as you can see from the photo. So I decided to make this part of the log a candidate for splitting, according to my ever evolving plan. I cut two deep, narrow notches on each side of the knot (the highest clump of wood in the photo is the one holding the knot):

And then I went to get ... my splitting maul!

Ah, yes, my splitting maul easily strikes fear into the heart(wood)s of logs that otherwise eat chainsaws for breakfast. It made fast work of the first clump just behind the one containing the knot, in merely three strikes:

But the knot seemed not the least bit shaken, and clearly was mocking me as I cleared away shattered wood from the first clump:

Well, my splitting maul decimated nearly all of the clump containing the knot, as well as the next clump right below it. But admittedly, the maul bounced off the knot one or two times. That knot was determined not to be disturbed:

At this point, I was tired and decided to call it quits for the evening. I cleared away some of the wood on either side of the knot using my felling axe, but the core of the knot is still there. An effort to return to some other day:

Here's a view of the surface of the log just above the knot. I still need to shave some wood down to the layout line on this side, and there also is a slight bulge in the very center of this area that I need to take down a bit, as well:

The other side was generally right down to the line. You can see the black crayon line on the side of the log, just below the cut, in the foreground of the photo. Also note the interesting demarcation between the lighter layer of sapwood, and the darker heart wood in the center of the log:

Counting crows....My usual spectators also came by to watch at one point. Can you spot all the crows in this tree? There also was one on the ground at the time, but I couldn't get all of them into the photo:

Timbering, Part IV -- Scoring

2009-03-26T13:59:00.000-07:00

Scoring is the removal of significant amounts of wood from one side of a log, as the first step in squaring the log into a flat-sided timber. I finally began scoring my maple workbench slab-top a few days ago. But alas, other demands on my time are destined to keep this a background project. However, I am long overdue for a blog update, and thought a short article describing the scoring process might be welcomed by those who are interested.

The scoring process essentially consists of cutting a sequence of notches along each side of the log that you intend to square. If you can imagine these first three notches continuing all the way down the length of the log, you get the basic idea:

The intent is to cut the notches to the depth of the layout lines running along the sides of the log. In other words, each notch just about touches the lines on either side of the log, while the bottom of each notch is just deep enough to meet the plane intersecting the two lines.

Of course, in practice, you can never cut them that precisely -- they either go a little too deep, resulting in axe marks in the timber face that you might need to smooth later on (e.g. using an adze), or they don't go quite deeply enough, so you have that much more wood to remove when you subsequently hew (square) the timber face with your broad axe. When I took the photos above, I had not yet finished cutting these notches all the way down to the lines.

Once the notches are cut, the next step is to remove the wood between them. Usually, this is accomplished by taking relatively horizontal strikes at the wood chunks between the notches, using the felling axe. However, because this is such a large log, I'll first split the chunks with a maul, and then clear the broken-up material with my felling axe.

Traditionally, scoring is done while standing atop the log, with the side being scored positioned vertically, as the gentleman in this photograph is doing:

Standing on the log actually makes quite a bit of sense. If you were out in the forest doing this, you could avoid standing on wet, muddy, or uneven ground. Furthermore, you could allow the weight of the axe to do most of the work, while you simply guide it to the target. However, in my case, the maple trunk is too large and too irregularly shaped to make this a comfortable position. Furthermore, the breadth of the trunk also makes it that much more difficult to gauge where the axe is striking, relative to the layout lines.

So, I have chosen instead to keep the face of the log horizontal while I score it. And with my ultra-simple and highly flexible hewing/bucking cradle, there is an advantage to doing it this way, since I can readily rotate the log to any angular position, and then securely lock it in place.

This means that I can begin cutting a notch on the horizontal face, rotate the log slightly toward me, and then continue cutting the notch toward the far side, while generally being able to see how close I am to the line. I can then rotate the log the other way to cut to the line on the near side of the log. All this can be accomplished while standing in the same position, and consistently moving the axe with the same basic motion, striking at about a 45 degree angle, toward the butt-end of the log:

For example, in the photograph below, I had already started the first notch, and then wanted to cut down to the line on the far side. So I tilted the log to the left and secured it...

...and then continued my cut toward the far line:

And, yes, I admit it -- I cut just a little too far on this one, striking just below the line at one point. But this is precisely why I allowed myself a 2" margin between the lines and the final slab surface.

In the photo below-left, I've released the movable supports and used a peavey to rotate the log in the other direction (away from me), so I can continue cutting the notch toward the near line. The below-right photo shows the log locked in place:

You can see that I got a cleaner cut this time -- just about as close to the line as I wanted it:

I'll post more photos as soon I finish cutting the remaining notches on this face of the log. In the mean time, I'll keep swinging and striking, while those crows keep a-cawing and a-mocking... :-)

[ The weight of an ax-head poised aloft, The grip of earth on outspread feet - Robert Frost ]

Two Tramps in Mud Time

2009-03-18T11:40:00.001-07:00

These two characters appeared on my roof the other afternoon while I was out in the yard pursuing my timber-shaping activities. They made quite a racket. At one point, both of them were leaning forward and cawing in rapid succession, in unison, like two over-zealous spectators at a football game.

Given the axe in my hands, it reminded me of a line from a poem of the same name as this posting, by Robert Frost: "Out of the mud two strangers came and caught me splitting wood in the yard, And one of them put me off my aim by hailing cheerily 'Hit them hard!'"

For some reason, there is a rather large number of crows around here that seem to just love my yard. They congregate here frequently on summer afternoons, often in pairs, some times even in threes. Often, they land on my roof, and I can hear the tap tap tap as they perch on the rain gutter just above the window of my study.

Here are two more photos I took last fall. The first is of a crow perched in my dogwood tree. You can't tell from the photo, but it was a very blustery afternoon, and he was riding up and down with the wind, until he finally decided to fly elsewhere. In the second photo, another crow is pacing the front yard:

There have been many interesting crow sightings here. Unfortunately, they are usually gone, though, by the time I manage to get my camera. I also make it a point not to leave anything small and valuable (like my camera) unattended in the yard, lest one of these little thieves should decide to pinch it.

Cradle Design and Operation in Detail

2009-03-16T20:24:00.000-07:00

Several people had asked for a more detailed description of the log cradle's construction and how it works. So I've published some more photos focusing on the cradle itself. Here they are:

The cradle consists primarily of a stationary stand, comprised of two supports, each of which consists of two 6 x 6 pressure treated pine posts, cut to four foot lengths, and fastened together with lag screws. There is also a four foot long 4 x 6 post that acts as a brace and ties the two supports together, giving them stability. Each support also has a chock fastened to it, about 4" inward from the brace. The chocks are cut from a 4 x 6 post, and are beveled at a 45 degree angle. The photo above shows the stationary stand, with the maple log rolled back a bit to give an unobstructed view.

The photo above shows the stand, from the other side.

The other two supports are shown above. These are the movable supports. Each is also comprised of two 6 x 6 x 4' posts and a chock, all fastened together with lag screws, just like the supports in the stationary stand. Note that the two chocks in the photo above come from opposite sides of the same cut of a 4 x 6 post. My 4-1/4" circular saw, beveled at 45 degrees, can't cut the post all the way through, so I cut one side, and then repeated the cut on the other side. Only I just didn't get the second kerf to quite meet the first one. Hence, the little ridge in the middle of the slanted face of each chock. (Turns out that that little ridge enhances the mechanical keying of the face of the chock when pressed against the log surface -- it's an unintentional optimization!)

The above photo shows the other side of the stand, with the two movable supports positioned along side the stationary supports and slightly under the log. I use the pickaroon at the far side of the photo to pick one end of a support up from the ground, so I can get a grip on it without having to bend my back.

In the photo above, I am using a log peavey to roll the log back toward the other end of the stationary stand, until it more or less comes in contact with the chocks on that side.

A couple of sharp taps from a sledge (a sixteen-pounder in the photo above) forces the movable support under the log until its chock makes contact with the log surface.

The photo above shows the view from the over side. The movable support is the same height as the fixed support, and just clears the underside of the brace.

Above, both movable supports have been tapped into place, with their wedges securely locking the log. If you need to re-position the log for some reason (e.g., you need to cut on another face), the easiest thing to do is tap one (or both) of the movable supports from the other side to release the log a little, use the peavey to rotate the log, and then tap the movable supports back in place to securely lock the log again. Note that the movable supports do not require a brace like the stationary ones do. In fact, you wouldn't want one, because the movable supports need to be free to move independently of one another (they have a way of "finding their place" when they are driven up against the log).

Finally, the photo above shows the stationary stand and the two movable supports, with the log completely locked in place, from the other side of the cradle.

Timbering, Part III -- Drawing Layout Lines

2009-03-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

Now that the weather is considerably more temperate, I decided to return to my (nearly perennial) workbench slab-top project. In the dead of winter, I began constructing a hewing/bucking cradle from a simple design that was churning in my head. The cradle consists of two stationary elements braced together, two moving elements, and two pairs of opposing wedges, or chocks, fixed to the elements.

Sure, I could have notched some logs and created something simpler that would've worked. But I wanted a cradle that was very stable and also usable for logs of any size. With my design, once the log is on the fixed portion of the cradle, a few good taps from a sledgehammer drives the movable elements in, completely locking the log between the chocks. The photo below shows the maple trunk securely held in the cradle:

I did some fine tuning of the cradle the past few evenings. Basically, I shortened the chocks a bit to provide a little more clearance on both sides of the log. I also deeply counter-sank the lag screws fastening the chocks and brace to the elements, just in case a misguided axe were to come down on top of one of the screw heads. Having the heads deeply recessed in the wood minimizes the chances of damaging the cutting edge of the axe bit.

This morning, I started scribing a layout for the slab. Nominally, I want the slab to be uniformly 6" thick. But I am allowing an extra 2" on the top of the slab to absorb any inadvertently deep scoring strikes, as well as to accommodate the infinite amount of planing I am ultimately going to have to do to achieve a fair surface on the bench top. Starting at the butt-end of the log, I used a level to draw two horizontal, parallel lines, 8" apart, with the pith of the log just about in the center of the nominal 6" slab. You can see those lines in the photo above.

I then drew a pair of lines in the same manner on the two stems at the top end of the log. This is pictured in the photo below:

Of course, the stem on the left is too small to accommodate the lower line. But so be it. It will be very interesting to see how this crotch turns out in the final table. Let it be rough and funky; the slab top is the only place where I demand a precise surface.

The next step was to scribe lines on each side of the log, intersecting with the upper horizontal lines at each end. This was going to be tricky; were the log straight, a simple chalk line would've sufficed. But this log is extremely irregular, and highly concave on one side. So I tried fastening a long, aluminum angle on the extremely concave side, with each end fastened just slightly below the heights of the upper lines at each end of the log. The angle is sufficiently rigid, of course, so as not to sag, and I fastened it at each end of the log with wood screws:

Then, I took my log scribe, which is basically a compass with adjustable levels built into it, and, making sure to keep the scribe in a level plane, ran it along the length of the angle, with its attached pencil drawing a scoring line length-wise along the side of the log. This seemed work reasonably well, though it was tricky keeping the scribe level, and I had to stop every so often to either extend, retract, or adjust the angle of, the pencil to keep it in contact with the log surface:

Next, I fastened the angle to the other side of the log, and similarly scribed a line:

To make the lines stand out better (and hopefully last a little longer), I finally took a large, black crayon, and traced it on top of the lines on both sides, as well as at the ends:

The butt-end of the log is about 20" in diameter. My guess is that I will not end up removing very much material from either side of the slab; rather, adze them to eliminate any high spots and get them reasonably planer. I may attempt to make the less concave of the two sides completely straight, but I haven't quite decided yet.

However, what I am contemplating for the extremely concave side (the side shown in the photo above) is shaping yet another, smaller slab, with a straight side and the other side crescent-shaped and convex, so as to key into the concave side of the first slab. In this case, the bench top will be generally rectangular, though composed of two interlocking "leaves" (so to speak). It will be approximately 24"-26" in width, except at the upper end, where the stems of the crotch measure about 31" across.

So now the first maple log is all set for scoring, and then hewing. All I need to do is get my axes honed, roll my sleeves up, and get to it...which is much easier said than done! This last photo is of my broad axe (hewing) and felling axe (scoring), both waiting to get tuned up (maybe on Sunday):

Today in History: The Return of Halley's Comet

2009-03-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

Edmund Halley, FRS (1656-1742)

It was 250 years ago today that Halley's Comet is recorded as having reached perihelion (i.e., closest distance to the sun) in its 1758-1759 return to the inner solar system. Of course, this comet has been orbiting the sun for eons. But what made this particular approach significant is that it had been predicted in advance by the English Astronomer Edmund Halley, in 1705.

Halley had been analyzing past comet sightings. He concluded that several observations of comets in the years 1456, 1531, 1607, and 1682, were actually appearances of the same comet, and he predicted that this periodic comet would re-appear in 1758. The comet did indeed appear on the 25th of December, 1758, and reached perihelion on the 13th of the following March. Henceforth, this comet became known as Halley's Comet.

Halley went on to succeed John Flamsteed as Astronomer Royal, in 1720. It is personally interesting to me, of course, that the Hawkins family undoubtedly observed Halley's comet in the winter of 1681-1682. Joseph Hawkins lived until October, 1682, leaving this world at the age of forty. The particular circumstances of his early demise are unknown, although a great many people died at relatively young ages in the early colonial settlements, compared to their contemporaries back in Europe (Halley himself lived to be 85, and Flamsteed lived to 73).

What I find profound about the comet is the manner in which it unites people across generations. I saw it myself in 1986. So did my parents. My father was alive, though very young, during its 1910 appearance. My mother had not been born yet. I doubt I will see its return in 2061 -- I'll be one hundred and one years old. But who knows? Maybe. Those of us who have experienced at least one lifetime sighting of Halley's Comet should consider ourselves to be very fortunate, indeed!

The nucleus of Halley's Comet, photographed by the European space probe Giotto, during the comet's 1986 fly-by.

Today's Findings: The Good, The Odd, And The Ugly

2009-02-20T11:43:00.001-08:00

On my lunch break today, I wandered once again into Sal's Treasure Hut, on Route 34, in Derby, and toured his prodigious collection of antiques, collectibles, and outright junk.

I like things that are old. I also like things that are a little odd, or even mildly weird. I like things that are rustic and not too delicate. And I especially like things that are not only decorative, but also readily functional in some capacity. Today, I ended up harvesting some glassware which collectively seems to satisfy most of those requirements.

The Good
This stoneware crock (I am very fond of stoneware, generally) has an attractive blue floral design, a wire handle, and drainage holes bored into the bottom. I'll probably use it as an extra crock for utensils, or maybe even for a small house plant:

The Odd
These two, small, oddly shaped, blue-glass pitchers are examples of the kind of glassware I like to collect for adorning window sills. I have a number of pieces like this: green glass, some reds, yellows, and a lot of blues. They have a nice way of sparkling in the sunlight when filled with water, and are ideal for holding small cuttings.

They make me think about life in early colonial days, when decent home decorations (and just about anything tinted blue) were hard to come by. Small colored glass bottles or containers brought over from Europe must have been viewed as a rare thing to have:

The Ugly
Somehow a tad ugly, somehow very beautiful, this bizarre looking stoneware creamer has a spout that was sharply pinched for precise pouring. But how very strange that so much of the flared top had been pulled in alongside the spout! Was this done intentionally? Who knows? But it's definitely a rare looking piece.

It has a nice, blue, floral pattern and also matches the crock nicely. I'll probably use it for an artificial floral piece, or maybe a small, live plant. But not as a creamer -- I never use old pieces like this for serving, because you never can be sure that they do not contain lead. Rather, I only use modern, purchased stoneware and reproduction pewter for serving and dining:

Friday Fun: Which Austen Heroine are You?

2009-02-19T17:51:00.000-08:00

If you need a small diversion today, and want to have some fun, consider heading over to the blog of my friend (and honorary cousin) Juliana Inman, and take her Austen Heroine quiz to find out which of Jane Austen's various heroines you happen to be!

The quiz only takes a few minutes. And if you do so, please make sure to say "hello" to Juliana, and let her know who your Austen heroine alter-ego is!

I took the quiz myself -- yes, that's right. I am secure enough in my masculinity to do this. And it turns out that I am Elinore Dashwood, as is Juliana. She claims that I must have a secret desire to be Emma Thompson -- well, I don't know about that, but I sure never wanted to be married to Kenneth Branagh, I can tell you that much!

Regarding Hawkins House updates, there is quite a bit going on, but little time to write about it. Most likely, I'll be able to get something new posted the first half of next week. In the meantime, have a great weekend, everyone!

Disclaimer on Home Building and Renovation

2009-02-16T22:08:00.000-08:00

Readers should keep in mind that any accounts of homebuilding, construction, or renovation work presented in this blog are purely anecdotal accounts of events taking place here at the Hawkins house, and are not necessarily endorsements of, nor suggestions for, any particular strategy for construction or do-it-yourself home improvement. You proceed at your own risk if you attempt to replicate any activities described here, as this blog is not intended to be a source of practical or safe information on homebuilding or construction.

(And you're truly out on a limb should you attempt to adopt any of my decorating, cooking, or gardening ideas... :-)

New Readers and Followers: Welcome!

2009-02-16T14:10:00.000-08:00

Greetings to all.

Over the past few months, there has been a considerable increase in the number of individuals landing on this blog and reading its postings. I'd like to welcome all of you, and want you to realize that I greatly appreciate your taking time out of your busy day to read my articles.

Furthermore, I encourage all of you to leave comments expressing your impressions and opinions on any articles that capture your interest (even old ones). Also, please feel free to ask questions; as a matter of policy, I make it a point to respond to all posted comments, and I will answer any questions if I am able to. And dissenting comments or criticism are equally welcome, too, as long as they are constructive and well-intentioned.

One of the great things about blogs, as opposed to more traditional mediums, is that communication can be bi-directional. I think it should be, as this enables readers to glean far more information than they would from static articles. And it enables the author to learn a thing or two from his/her readers, and improve content going forward.

So a big welcome to you all! And I hope you continue to enjoy this blog...

Sincerely,
John

Geothermal Heat Pump on a Friday Afternoon

2009-02-13T13:42:00.000-08:00

Given the very recent rise in temperatures around here, I thought it would be a good idea to go outside and inspect my geothermal heating system. At the heart of the system is the geothermal heat pump, and a critical component of that heat pump is the core element:

Well, yes, it does look like a patch of old snow, doesn't it? That might very well be the case, but today, it's been re-purposed as a geothermal heat pump, the nature of which is to provide a sustainable source of thermal energy for heating and cooling (in this case, cooling). You can see the delicate core element right in the very center in the photo above.

Next, I firmly, but gently, grasped the core element with my hand, and slowly extracted it from the geothermal pump. It seems like, overall, it's in pretty good condition:

I then brought it inside the house and sat it down at my desk while I continued to blog (about this very same topic, no less). Then removed the end cap and inspected the core's contents. I am happy to report that this experiment in sustainable energy use has gone remarkably well: My goals for adequate refrigeration have been achieved, with negligible (near-zero) impact on the earth's resources.

And now, it's time for a poem:

A Patch of Old Snow

There's a patch of old snow in a corner
That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
Had brought to rest.

It is speckled with grime as if
Small print overspread it,
The news of a day I've forgotten --
If I ever read it.

-- Robert Frost

Have a great weekend, and Happy Valentines Day to all my sweethearts out there! :-)

Yale Gilder Boathouse in Winter

2009-02-06T12:29:00.000-08:00

Yale University's Gilder Boathouse is just a few blocks from my home. I stopped by today while on an errand, and took a few photos. All I can say is: Don't expect to see any crews practicing out on the river this afternoon!

Gilder Boathouse entrance

Yale docks, hove-to in solid ice (who left the coaching launch out on the dock?)

The Derby Dam, just below the boathouse. Did you know that back in the late 1800's, when winters were much colder than they are now, this was a popular destination for ice skating?

(A transliterated version of this article has also been cross-posted on the New Haven Rowing Club's online newsletter, The Catch)

John Flamsteed and Hawkins House History

2009-02-03T16:39:00.001-08:00

Astronomer John Flamsteed, Fellow of the Royal Society (1646-1719)

In a previous posting, I wrote about the Little Ice Age, and the harsh New England winters that the early Hawkins family endured. What follows here expands somewhat on that same thread, by highlighting a number of interesting chronological intersections between early days at the Hawkins House, the life of British Astronomer John Flamsteed, and that period of extreme global cooling known as the Little Ice Age.

I've synthesized all the information below from the contents of two Wikipedia pages on the Maunder Mimimum, and John Flamsteed, respectively, and recorded Hawkins family history. Enjoy!

The middle (and coldest) part of the Little Ice Age coincided with the Maunder Minimum, a period of observed minimal sunspot activity, that occured from 1645 to 1715. Whether or not there is a scientific connection between these two events is currently being debated.

The year 1670, the same year that the Hawkins homestead was established in Derby, Connecticut, was the lowest point in the Maunder Minimum. Astronomers recorded no sunspots at all that year.

In 1674, while the Hawkins House was probably under construction, astronomer John Flamsteed, of Derbyshire, England, spent two months at Cambridge and heard Isaac Newton deliver his Lucasian Lectures. Isaac Newton was born, by the way, in 1643, less than one year after the birth of Joseph Hawkins. Newton and Hawkins could be said to have lived fairly parallel lives, going through their most significant life phases roughly at the same time, until Hawkins' untimely death in 1682, at age forty. It is almost absolutely certain, of course, the neither man had any knowledge of the other.

In March of 1675, two months prior to the founding of Derby, Connecticut, Flamsteed was appointed the first British Astronomer Royal. Derby, Connecticut was named after Derby, Derbyshire, England, by the way, and Flamsteed was a graduate of the Derby School in Derbyshire.

In June of 1675, the month following the founding of Derby, Connecticut, the Royal Greenwich Observatory was established, with Flamsteed laying the foundation stone that August.

Flamsteed's residence at the Observatory was from July of 1676 until 1684, more or less coinciding with the height of Hawkins family activity in Derby, Connecticut, until Joseph Hawkins' death in 1682.

A modern analysis of certain of Flamsteed's observations reveal that the sun's rotation may have actually slowed down during the lowest period of the Maunder Minimum (which, of course, hit its own local minima in 1670).

Joseph and Abigail Hawkins, and their children, in addition to enduring some of the harshest New England winters in history, may have frequently observed auroras during their early years together in the Hawkins House! All this owing to the sun's activity during the Maunder Minimum.

So...is all of this historical concurrency merely coincidental? Or have I stumbled across a few, exposed portions of some profound cosmic thread that ultimately reveals itself only over some very, very long period of time? I think I'll leave it up to the readers to decide for themselves....

"February," de Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, c. 1410

Timbering, Part II -- The Ultimate Cradle for Hewing a Log

2009-02-02T15:34:00.000-08:00

Despite the wind and subfreezing temperatures, I continued working outside on my Roubo workbench project this past Saturday. Even though this maple section is large in diameter, I decided to raise it a bit higher to make the hewing process that less tiring. So I raised it and placed four additional 6x6x4 blocks under the existing ones, then tied the upper and lower blocks together with 10" lag screws:

Next, I cut four wedges from a 4x6 post, placed each of a pair of wedges on opposing sides of the upper-most blocks, and similarly fastened them down with lag screws. A bit hard to describe in words, but easy enough to glean from these photographs (the photo on the right, below, shows the opposing wedges; whack one of the support elements with a large sledgehammer in the direction of the log, and the log is then locked between the wedges):

What resulted from this relatively simple effort was a surprisingly stable and adjustable cradle for hewing (stable, that is, with the addition of a cross brace joining two of the pairs of blocks -- not shown in the above photos). A few solid taps from a sledge hammer on opposite ends of each pair of blocks either nudges the wedges up against the log, or away from the log to release it. And even though each pair of joined blocks is a bit heavy, the cradle as a whole should prove fairly easy to transport. So I've created the ultimate cradle for hewing logs! YEAH! (Well, at least for my purposes, anyway). Next step will be laying out scoring lines. Stay tuned, and I'll try to maintain my composure... :-)

Note: Since I initially began construction of this cradle back in the snowy winter, I've written a more comprehensive article describing the final cradle product and how it is used. You can find that article here.

Conjunction of the Moon and Venus

2009-02-01T10:10:00.000-08:00

There was a spectacular conjunction of the crescent Moon and Venus this past Friday (January 30th) evening. The two hung together like a clock face and pendulum through out much of the early evening, steadily descending the western sky, until the Moon finally set around 9:40PM EST.

I took the above photo from my front porch, around 6PM. Not too bad, I suppose, for a relatively simple digital camera on a small tripod.

This conjunction will occur again on Friday, February 27th, 2009, with an even brighter, and somewhat crescented, Venus.

Fundamental Laws of Thermodynamics

2009-01-30T13:34:00.001-08:00

A true engineer not only understands the thermal properties of snow, but also knows how to exploit them to accomplish useful work...

Have a great weekend, everybody!

Little Book Case

2009-01-30T11:14:00.000-08:00

This afternoon, I dropped in at Books by the Falls, on Route 34, in Derby, and picked up this very small book case. Books by the Falls, by the way, is something of a local landmark, a seller of old and rare books, and antique furniture, located in a former nineteenth century factory building. Interestingly enough, the owner was telling me that he sells book cases more than just about anything else. He certainly has a great many of them in his shop. Definitely consider heading down there if you're looking for one!

This book case was just right -- it filled up an empty space along a wall that was just crying out for a small accent piece. The chamfers along the edges of the shelves are very intriguing. Anyone care to guess why they're there? My guess is that this book case was made from wood that previously served some other purpose. I've always been fascinated by the re-purposing of architectural wood, and there certainly is no shortage of examples here at the Hawkins House!

Timbering!

2009-01-27T12:14:00.000-08:00

For me, this really is what it's all about (or at least, should be). Whenever I find myself pontificating too much on window treatments, or gardening, or celestial events, it's usually because I've momentarily drifted too far away from the mechanical arts. And now, a postponed workbench project seems to be calling me back again!

Above left: The maple section for the bench top. I am not particularly worried about the crotch -- let it contribute to the irregular, roughly-hewn outline of the bench top. And I am not too concerned about checks in the wood, either. Above right: Cutting a kerf around one of the posts.

Back in the fall, I removed an old silver maple that was in danger of falling, and saved the largest, clearest sections of the trunk for a future project: A hand-hewn workbench, modeled generally on the Roubo bench, which is an eighteenth century French design. The Roubo is a minimalistic joyner's bench and features a very heavy slab for a top. (An example can be seen here).

So, where on earth does one find, say, a 5" thick hardwood slab, of just about the right width and length? Well, I just happen to have one! Only I need to liberate it from one of the larger maple sections. Although I had started this project back in the fall, more pressing things crept into my schedule, making it necessary for me to put this project off for a while. However, the recent clear winter days have motivated me (despite the severe cold snap) to go back outside and re-start this effort.

Above left: My antique cross-cut saw. Above right: Using it to complete the cut in the post.

Today, I set out to get the maple section properly cradled in preparation for hewing. I cut two 6x6x8 posts of pressure treated pine in half to use as the basis for a good, stable cradle. Having two 6x6x4 "blocks" at each end means that one of them can serve as a stable lifting surface (i.e., using a log jack) while working-in large wedges between the log and top of the neighboring block. My 7-1/4" circular saw wasn't quite big enough, of course, to completely cut the post, so I just cut a kerf around the center of each post, and used a hand saw to finish the cut.

Then, I moved the maple section on top of the blocks using a peavy, and placed a few temporary wedges underneath it. My next step will be to more precisely angle the log, and then completely stabilize it, prior to marking the cutting lines. But this was just the right amount of effort to make for a nice break on a sunny, winter afternoon, and accomplish something both useful and fun.

Above left: The maple section cradled, sans some final angling and additional wedges/shims prior to laying-out the scoring lines. Above right: My Iltis single-bit felling axe is really sweet -- who cares if it's not exactly a traditional pattern? I'll be using it to score the log.

Wintertime Window Treatments

2009-01-26T13:13:00.001-08:00

The emerging, de facto standard at the Hawkins House for winter curtains (yes, winter curtains) is the use of heavy linen drawback festoons. Modeled after early (eighteenth century) colonial window coverings that were once made from a variety of materials, including tobacco cloth, these modern day equivalents have a traditional look, while featuring a nicely hidden drawstring on the back of the curtain that allows you to gather the material up on either the left or right side.

Drawback festoon in a linen and black checked pattern

But one of the nicest benefits of these curtains is their draft-blocking ability. Although not insulated, they are very heavy, and they seem to do a pretty good job keeping my drafty old windows from becoming a real nuisance. Even when I eventually get the windows sealed better, they will still offer a big advantage, serving as heavy barriers between the relatively cold panels of glass, and the relatively warmer air circulating through the room.

These early style festoons are made in a very old, family-run, textile mill in South Carolina. But you can buy them through a number of sources, including The Primitive Cellar, Farmhouse Primitives (both of whom also carry tobacco cloth and tea-dyed drawback curtains of several different styles), and Piper Classics.

Linen-on-linen festoons in the hall chamber; when I want to maximize light flow through a southerly facing window, so as to warm a room up, I fold the drawback curtain up over the rod like this (all the more reason for hanging them from rods, although purists might insist on suspending them from thin lines)

When spring returns, these guys will be taken down and put away, to be replaced with a variety of light-weight swags, or in some rooms, traditional fishtail swags. I also need to install some roller shades in the front windows, because the summer time UV assault through these windows in the late afternoon is unforgiving, and is really starting to do a number on some articles in these rooms.

Kale Under Ice

2009-01-23T13:24:00.000-08:00

My kale bed has been buried under the snow for a good number of weeks now, and I wanted to see how the plants were doing. So I decided to uncover one of the plants. I brushed away a top layer of relatively soft snow, and then had to break through a heavier, icy crust before exposing the plant.

This particular plant seemed to be doing quite well. Its upper most leaves were wilted and damaged, but the lower ones seemed fine. I separated three of the lower leaves from the stalk and found them to be crisp and supple, with only a little frost damage on one of them. I covered it up again, and didn't bother inspecting the other plants.

So I've declared this winter planting and harvesting experiment a success! We've had plenty of snow and consistently sub-freezing temperatures for several weeks now, and the kale still seems to be thriving, with nothing but a layer of mulch below, and a cover of snow above, to protect it. Next season, I'll try planting a larger collection of different varieties of kale plants, and we'll see how that goes. It would also be interesting if these particular plants go to seed in a few more months, when the weather warms up.

A New Era of Responsibility

2009-01-20T09:43:00.001-08:00

Congratulations to President Barack Obama today on his Inauguration!

I stayed home today and watched the entire event this morning via streaming video. And in keeping with my tech-oriented pedantries, even tweeted some of the key moments. That probably doesn't sound all that profound, but watching this event while sitting here in a 330+ year old residence can't help but to amplify the significance of this event, in a very concrete way.

When I consider the fact that slavery was introduced to the New World by New England colonists in the early 1600's, was nearly universally practiced here until the 1830's, that my own home was once tended to by domestic slaves (the old town records show at least two associated with the house in 1682), and that even my own forebears in the south possibly participated in slavery, and definitely exploited the convict labor system in Georgia in the early 1900's, it makes me all too well aware of how ensconced I am in this history, while speaking volumes as to the incredible progress we've made since. That an African-American has now ascended to our highest office will certainly mark a positive turning point in our country's history.

And what a remarkable day it was marking this event. Yes, brutally cold, but calm, clear, and blue skies. We had just had two or three days of overcast skies and at least as many snowfalls. But the weather basically turned out fine and gave us a pristine Inauguration Day.

Our own post-Inaugural party, at the home of my friend Alice

USA Service

Hey Rocky, Watch Me Pull A Squirrel Out Of My Attic...Again?!

2009-01-11T15:02:00.001-08:00

This here's a story about Billy Joe and Bobbie Sue, two young squirrels with nothin' better to do -- except unleash their squirrelly wrath on me all last week, that is.

Billy Joe and Bobbie Sue, shortly after their capture.

Yes, these two bushy-tailed reprobates managed to get into my house a little over a week ago, gnawing their way through a small, dry-rotted section of my outside cellar door. I initially became aware of their presence when I first heard Bobbie Sue, the louder, more tempestuous of the two, crawling around and whimpering inside the wet wall that carries the plumbing from the basement to the upper floors.

So I had a squirrel on my hands. But didn't realize I had two until the next day, when I spotted both of them in the attic.

The now blocked entry hole in the cellar door; Billy Joe shortly after his release, apparently making a rude paw gesture at me from his perch up in the tree

Fortunately for me, their access to the house was relatively limited. They had the run of the basement, of course (in which they made a real mess), the innards of the partition wall which they used as a pathway to the attic, the northeast chamber (which is currently empty, and I had kept the door closed all along, anyway, to stop drafts -- good thing for that), and then, of course, the attic. They have a natural instinct to climb to the highest possible elevations, and this must have prompted them to head up there.

Catching them was a royal pain. I swear, they knew what I was up to, and tried to mess with my head. I set a total of three Havahart live traps for them; two in the attic, and one in the basement, just in case either attempted to venture back outside the house via the basement. On one occasion, the bait (peanut butter) was removed from one trap without springing it. On another occasion, a trap was sprung, but with no animal inside. And then, the traps were totally ignored for several days. But eventually, either hunger prevailed, or they just got careless, and I caught both of them in the attic.

Of the two, Billy Joe was the quiet one, staying relatively still, except when I carried his trap, and never uttering a sound. But Bobbie Sue protested her entrapment loudly. I recognized her as being the one who complained from behind the wall a few days earlier, when I was banging it with a flat wrecking bar, trying to drive them away. And she fought the confines of her cage furiously, trying to bust her way out.

Bobbie Sue, escaping her trap and climbing the sappling

Fearing that they knew the house all too well at this point, and might find some other way back in, I decided to take them to nearby Osborndale State Park to release them to the wild. I released Billy Joe first. He immediately made for the nearest tree, and quickly ascended to the upper-most portion of the canopy.

Out on a small limb with no where else to go, Bobbie Sue eventually plummeted to earth, cushioned by the fresh snow (unfortunately, I didn't get a shot of this); she then quickly ascended the same tree taken previously by Billy Joe

But Bobbie Sue's path to freedom was a bit more haphazard, perhaps somewhat in keeping with her tempestuous nature. She darted toward a small sappling right near her trap and quickly climbed it, only to find herself hanging perilously from a very small limb, with no where else to go. She either deliberately let go, or lost her grip, and fell about seven or eight feet down onto the soft snow, totally unscathed, and then ran to the same tree Billy Joe had ascended previously, and began her fast ascent. After a while, she was completely out of sight, lost in the canopy of the tree.

By the way, in case you're wondering, I actually have no idea what sex either squirrel was. My choice of names was simply inspired by that old Steve Miller song, Take the Money and Run, which was playing on my van's radio during the drive over to Osborndale. Before writing this posting, I did some Internet research on Eastern gray squirrels, and found that males and females are generally indistinguishable in terms of relative size and fur coloration.

I also found that gray squirrels mate in January and have a gestation period of about forty-five days. So if either of these two squirrels happened to have been a pregnant female, rest assured that there's sufficient time to find an adequate nest for the new litter. But thank goodness that nest won't be my attic!

Parlor Baseboards

2009-01-04T08:56:00.000-08:00

It seems like the parlor is quickly becoming the candidate room for exploratory, surgical deconstruction. A few days ago, I removed most of the baseboards around the perimeter of the room to get an idea of the age and construction of the surrounding plaster walls. As always, there were some discoveries.

Above left: Some of the baseboards. Above right: A small part of the exterior timber post of the southwest end of bent #2 is exposed. Note the milled lath where some plaster broke away from the wall. There also is some wire mesh that had been used to support the plaster.

When I removed the baseboard surrounding the interior post of bent #1, I found two small blocks of wood that had been used to build up the baseboard around the post. Each block had old wall paper attached to one side, with interesting floral designs. I've never seen these papers anywhere else in the house, and can't help but wonder where the blocks originally came from. Probably, they had been cut from earlier baseboards that had been papered-over.

Above left: Interior post of bent #1. Above right: The blocking used to build out the baseboard surrounding the post. The attached floral wall paper was facing the post when the blocks were in place.

I'm not a design expert, but to me, these floral patterns look somewhat Art Nouveau- or Arts and Crafts-ish (or are they even Victorian?). In my eternal quest to figure out the relative ages of things, they suggest to me that this construction (plaster wall + baseboard) is relatively recent. At least, probably no earlier than the early 1900's, or late nineteenth century at most. The plaster itself has a high sand content and contains horse hair, and the lath is uniformly milled and fastened with wire nails. So that would also seem consistent with my estimate.

Just by way of comparison, there is another interesting floral paper decorating a wall inside the entry way closet, under the second floor stair. The paper is badly worn, stained, and broken by splitting plaster, but you can still see what a nice design it had been; it reminds me a bit of old-style theorems:

Above: Old floral wallpaper on one of the foyer closet walls.

Perhaps I should develop a collection of stencils based on these designs. I could refer to them as "The Hawkins Collection," or "Patterns discovered in the Hawkins House, Derby, Connecticut," and use them as the basis for fireboards or canvas floorcloths. :-)

Cold Moon Rising

2008-12-12T20:00:00.000-08:00

Full Cold Moon rising amidst clouds and trees; Derby, Connecticut, 12 December 2008, at 6PM

Tonight, a perigean Full Cold Moon rose at just about 4PM EDT. According to The Old Farmers Almanac, it was the largest and brightest full moon this year. Not only was the moon in full phase, but it was also at perigee (orbiting nearest the earth). I took the above photo about two hours after the moon rose. The afternoon was overcast, but fortunately, the cloud cover pretty much dissipated shortly after night fall, making for good viewing.

First Snow

2008-12-07T19:44:00.000-08:00

Kale, comfortable under a snowy blanket

Yesterday was relatively mild and nearly windless. But last night brought us our first snow of the season, followed by a clear, but very cold and blustery day. More of the same is predicted for the next few days. Fortunately, I managed to get all my containers and kale fully watered and covered with mulch during last week's warm spell. For the kale, I built layers of mulch up around the bases and sides to protect the shallow root systems, but left the leaves exposed to the sun.

Uncovering the Parlor Floor & Related Findings

2008-12-07T16:44:00.000-08:00

This past Friday, I decided to begin removing all the wall-to-wall carpeting from the first floor of the house, starting with the parlor. Old and very worn, it certainly served the previous occupants well, but I would much rather have the original wooden floors exposed, and at least slowly get started on what I anticipate to be a long process of repair and restoration of the old planks. So it's now time for all that old carpeting to go.

I suspect that the wooden floors are in pretty rough shape. Gazing upward from the cellar, one can see that most of the original planks are still there, but many are twisted or checked, and some have areas of deterioration or insect damage. I think that the condition of the original floors was what prompted the wall-to-wall carpeting in the first place -- someone decided that the old planks needed to be hidden, and perhaps also hoped to achieve some degree of leveling of the floors without having to deal with the joist system below.

Also, from a few exploratory removals of swatches, I've found that there are varying types of underlayment between the carpeting and the floor planks. In the case of both the parlor and the hall, for example, relatively modern hardwood floors appear to cover the old planks. On the other hand, the dining room carpeting appears to be underlayed with plywood. I clearly need to determine exactly what's there, and decide how any underlayments ought to be dealt with.

So, then, on to the parlor ...

Above left: A view of the parlor, in the direction of the kitchen, with about half of the carpeting raised and folded over. The white door leads into the former chimney space, which, on the first floor, now serves as a walk-in closet and pantry, and encloses the cellar stair. Above right: The other side of the parlor. The odd looking panel (about 1' x 2') on the east partition wall allows access to bathroom plumbing.

Above: Just out of curiosity, let's remove that panel and see what's behind it. Just bathtub plumbing ... and a precipitous drop straight down into the basement!

I began by lifting the carpeting off the parlor/front foyer threshold (to which it was stapled), using a pry bar, and then worked my way down the length of the south end of the room, and about half way across each side. I folded the carpeting over and drew a long cut down the fold with a utility knife so it would lay flat. I then pulled the old foam backing up from the floor. Needless to say, it was a bit of a dirty job, with decades of old carpet fibers getting launched into the air, and many staples still embedded in both the floor boards and the edges of the carpeting.

But, doing this revealed a large area of the hardwood floor that had been hidden by the carpeting, and which, in turn, is hiding the original seventeenth century planks. Perhaps the most striking thing about this floor is just how uneven it actually is. There is a pronounced bump running parallel to the south end of the floor that gradually levels out near both the front and back of the room, as well as in the direction of the north end of the house. Perviously, one had some sense of this perturbation when walking across the covered floor, but now, there's also an acute visual awareness of it that seems to make its contours all that much more dramatic.

I went down into the cellar to try to determine the cause of this deformation, and concluded that it was caused by a transverse summer beam that had been bowed upwared, more or less in its mid-section, by a modern steel support post which, apparently, is just too long. My guess is that, right after the house was moved to its current location back in the 1950's, and placed on its new foundation, there was a perceived need to directly support the summer (as well as a number of other timbers in the flooring system). Someone must have jacked the summer upward just high enough to accomodate the post, but perhaps did not realize what was happening to the floor above. Once the problem was discovered, perhaps it was deemed too late to do anything about it, now that the post had been secured in place.

Above left: Southwest corner of the parlor and door to the front foyer. At one time, there had been an area rug or other covering (about 8' x 10') stapled down in the center of the room, and the exposed flooring was finished and sealed. Above right: Looking toward the northwest corner.

Above left: Close-up of northwest corner of the parlor. I used an old glass milk pitcher to collect staples as I removed them from the carpeting. Above right: There is an abrupt bump just at the border of the finished and unfinished portions of the floor, and running parallel to the south side of the room. The floor appears to rise steeply from the interior partition, and then descend gradually in the direction of the north end. The bump likewise flattens out both at the front and back of the room.

Above left: Another view of the bump and the unfinished/finished portions of the overlay floor. Above right: Close-up of the unfinished area of the floor. Even though the floor boards are milled tongue-and-groove, quite a number of them are face nailed. Perhaps this was done to eliminate movement and creaking. Although the floor is exceptionally uneven, it is also very solid and quiet.

Above left: The cause of the bump in the floor above -- a transverse summer beam near the north end of the house is being bowed upward by a steel post. The steel post is simply too tall. Above right: The end of the summer beam where it joins the sill. The underside of the summer is notched where it fits the sill pocket, and there is another (wooden) post supporting the end of the summer. The connection between the summer and the sill seems tenuous, at best. Perhaps this is partly a result of the bowing, but the same situation also exists with the other transverse summer at the south end of the house. My guess is that the sill is too far forward. In any case, this accounts for the wooden support post at the sill end of the summer (there similarly is a steel post at the sill end of the other transverse summer, as well).

Needless to say, this situation presents a significant challenge. I do not find such an abrupt deformation in the flooring acceptable for a home that is meant to be lived in. On the other hand, any adjustment will need to be done in a fashion that maintains the structural integrity of the floor system, while ensuring that nothing of historical value is unnecessarily damaged or removed.

Another interesting aspect of this newly discovered hardwood floor is how difficult it is to assess its age. The floor is comprised of milled tongue-and-groove boards that are consistently 12'-6" in length, except for the first four courses at the front of the room.The boards are of five different widths. I've measured nominal widths of 5", 4", and 3", and actual widths of 4" and 3". They are randomly placed with respect to their relative widths. And despite the tongue-and-groove construction, many of the boards are randomly face-nailed, all with machine-made, square-cut nails whose heads appear identical to those of the 2-1/2" nails that I've extraced elsewhere from the house.

Above left: Machine-made square nail, used to face-nail one of the planks. Above right: What on earth is this?! It looks like a metal wedge for securing a hammer or axe head to its handle, but perhaps not quite. I found this approximately in the center of the floor.

All this leads me to conclude that this floor is extremely old. Perhaps of the same vintage as the overlay floor in the hall chamber upstairs. But exactly what its age is, is very difficult to say. And this presents yet another dilemma: If this floor is historically significant, then I am not going to remove it. But what about the seventeenth century planks underneath? Basically, we seem to have one historic construction covering up another. So what do I do about that?

One possibility might be to remove just a few courses of the overlay boards from some specific area of the parlor that can be isolated from foot traffic. For example, maybe the first six courses at the front of the room, right beneath the two front windows. A cap molding of some kind could be installed along the edges, and the resulting trough could be filled with, say, a wide accent table or low-boy. This would prevent the area from being walked on, while allowing at least a portion of the original planks to be displayed.

Interestingly enough, I was considering this idea last Saturday afternoon, and later that same day, came across an article in the Winter 2008 issue of Renovation Style magazine (pp. 56-69, and p. 128), which described a somewhat similar situation. In this case, the homeowners had renovated a nineteenth century farm house, and decided to leave a portion of the internal construction of an old wall and chimney exposed. In my own situation, I am concerned primarily with historical preservation and repair, rather than renovation per se. But the analogy was there, nonetheless, and the discovery of that article made for an interesting coincidence.

Anyway, back to the problem of carpet removal.

So, I continued removing the rest of the carpet and foam backing, and then set about prying up the nailing strips all along the edges of the floor. Still having some ambition after all that, I also removed the carpeting from the front entrance foyer, and the first three treads of the second floor stair. The foyer floor turned out to be a true modern hardwood floor, with short boards of uniform width, randomly placed, and absent of any face nailing. This is not an overlay floor -- the old planks forming the original foyer floor apparently are long gone. As for the stair treads, they are clearly in rough shape, and are going to require quite a bit of tending to.

Above left: Carpeting and nailing strips completely removed from the parlor. There still are quite a number of random staples and nails all over the floor that need to be removed. Above right: This photo shows that there had been several generations of area covers, all at slightly different distances from the wall.

Above: While working on the parlor, I also removed carpeting from the front foyer.

Above left: View from the foyer into the parlor. Above right: I also removed carpeting from the first three steps of the second floor stair (I had not yet removed the tacks when I took this photo). The treads are very worn, checked, and full of nail holes from earlier carpeting or runner installations. They clearly need quite a bit of attention. My guess is that these treads are not completely original, but nonetheless, quite old (perphaps mid to late eighteenth century). The hand rail had been temporarily removed to get a large piece of furniture upstairs.

The Cheese Press Cometh

2008-11-30T20:50:00.000-08:00

Two Fridays ago, I came across this ancient cheese press at the Treasure Hut, the antique and collectibles store at the corner of Route 34 and Cedric. Run by Al and Joan for a good many years, the Treasure Hut is a something of a long standing Derby CT landmark.

This press is beautifully made, with a lot of clean mortise-and-tenon joinery, and just a few metal fasteners. It's in great shape and has a fine finish. The only thing missing is the actual mold used to hold and separate the whey. I am not exactly sure what I am going to do with it; I suppose it will just stay in the upstairs work room for now, and ultimately find a place in the future restored kitchen.

Kale and Thoughts on the Little Ice Age

2008-11-21T18:59:00.000-08:00

It seems like we've had our first real taste of winter these past five days; unseasonably cold and blustery, with mid-day temperatures never above 40 degrees and plumeting down into the mid-twenties at night. The pansies and mums I have in two hanging baskets out front nearly bought it the other day when I'd left them outside until merely an hour after sunset. Fortunately, the protection of a relatively warmer night in the basement seemed to revive them (at least somewhat).

Kale thriving in mostly sub-freezing weather

By comparison, the dwarf kale I had planted out back is not only surviving, but apparently thriving, in this sudden cold. The plants are noticeably larger than they were just a few weeks ago. This is truly a cold weather loving plant. But none the less, this winter is predicted to be a severe one, and as soon as there is a slight rise in temperature, I'll properly protect them with a cover of mulch.

All the upstairs rooms of the Hawkins House, except for the hall chamber, lack hot-air registers. In these conditions, they take a long time to warm up, as hot air slowly circulates out from the hall chamber, as well as upwards from the first floor. These unheated rooms always remain on the cool side, and begin to chill rapidly as soon as the furnace shuts off. This is something I'll need to address in my plans to improve the heating system next year.

However, it got me thinking about what life in the house was like in the distant past.

Winters in colonial New England were generally far more severe than what we've experienced in modern times. In fact, many climatologists agree that there was a general dip in temperatures in Europe and North America, from around the mid-seventeenth century until the late nineteenth century, a period sometimes referred to as The Little Ice Age.

My house's early occupants had endured far more severe and prolonged cold than I will perhaps ever experience in my life time. It's hard to imagine what it was like trying to stay warm on those frigid winter nights, the entire family huddled together in the kitchen or great room, directly in front of the largest fireplace in the house. Some one had to ensure that the fire remained stoked throughout the night, and no one dared venture away from the flames and into the outer rooms.

[ This house is frozen brittle, all except this room you sit in. - Robert Frost, "Snow" ]

So why am I complaining about a mere 11 degrees below average, over just a few days in November?

The BRT on Christmas Eve, about one month after this posting, with an interesting wind-blown slab on its roof.

A Writing Table for the Spinning Room

2008-11-20T20:29:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, I finally got around to assembling a writing table I had purchased a few weeks earlier from Home Decorators Collection. They call it a multi-use writing table. It's part of my ongoing effort to set an informal study up in the old spinning room. In fact, I've decided to make all three back rooms of the second floor into special-purpose work rooms: The southeast bed chamber as a computer room, the spinning room as a cozy refuge for reading and writing, and the northeast bed chamber as a small workshop for second-floor restoration and preservation work. Longer term, the northeast chamber eventually might be fashioned into a second floor bath, but there are far more pressing things to accomplish right now; hence, the second floor workshop.

All the wooden parts comprising the writing table; assembled trestle and drawers

When it comes to furniture for the house, colonial, shaker, and some country styles, generally work best. On the other hand, some modern pieces that are relatively simplistic, comprised of darkly finished wood, and are generally reminiscent of earlier times, also seem to fit well with the overall tone of the house -- sometimes even better than actual vintage furniture. And while I prefer to acquire vintage furniture, I sometimes find it difficult to obtain what I am looking for in used pieces. The multi-purpose writing table, on the other hand, is precisely what I wanted for the spinning room study. I think I would've been hard-pressed to find anything quite like it second-hand.

Spinner and ratchet screw driver; joining the table top and frame

The table arrived completely disassembled, but wasn't all that difficult to join together, in large part because it fastens with simple knock-down screws and connectors. For most joints, a wooden dowel is also inserted parallel to the connector to prevent movement in the assembled joint, as well as to provide the correct spatial orientation between the two parts. The only tools required are a 4mm allen head wrench (one came with the table, but I prefer to use an allen head socket with a spinner), and a #2 philips head screw driver (I like to use my ratchet screw driver on these kinds of jobs nearly all the time).

Remaining table-top hardware installed; the completed writing table

Five pieces of hardware fasten the table top to the main frame assembly: Three small hinges that attach along the edges of the top and frame, two larger spring loaded hinges that faciliate the angling of the table top over the frame, and a big ratchet-style arm that supports the table top when angled. I found it easiest to add this hardware with the table top upside-down on horses and the attached frame rigidly supported; in this case, I simple butted it against the wall.

Table and stool; top positioned at a comfortable angle for drafting

Once the top and frame are joined, the frame supports are simply inserted into the trestle legs, and two wooden pins are used to hold the frame at the desired height. The top can rest flat for reading or writing, or can be angled for drawing or drafting. Three capped inserts keep things from rolling off. For now, I've positioned the table against the partition on the south side of the room (more or less as shown in the last photo above). This enables natural light entering the window to illuminate the table top at a slight angle from just behind one's left shoulder. It also addresses the problem of what to do with that relatively empty wall space.

An Experiment in Winter Planting

2008-10-31T11:24:00.000-07:00

Today, I planted three white kale in a row, in a location of the yard that will continue to get a lot of sunlight during the day, even as the sun angle decreases with the onset of winter. This is a simple experiment in late season planting and winter growing inspired by an article I recently read in the 2009 Old Farmer's Almanac.

My plan is to build a small wooden box around the kale and fill it with about a foot of organic mulch before the Big Freeze really settles in. Through out the winter, I'll occasionally harvest small quantities of kale, water during the warm spells, and see if I can keep this process going through out January, February, and into March.

Kale row in a sunny part of the yard

The afternoon sun is casting long shadows now, as demonstrated by a tall weed growing through the walkway; this is by far the sunniest part of the yard year-round, and the future site of a large, bordered herb garden

While looking over some of the containers out front, I couldn't help but notice that the pollinators that had been so busy merely a month ago are all gone now. With the exception of a few very small flies flitting around the flowers, there was no more of that frantic activity during the sunny hours of the late mornings and afternoons that I had come to enjoy so much. Of course, winter is nearly upon us, and the bees are done collecting their pollen, having stored it all away in anticipation of the vernal birth of the next generation of their bee progeny.

However, I did come across one honey bee -- extremely large and lathargic, he appeared to be completely sacked of energy from the recent cold spell. He wasn't flying, rather just crawling around on one of the containers. It looked like he wanted a comfortable location to camp out, so I managed to get him to cling to a small twig, and placed the twig just below a canopy of salvia. He was still sluggishly exploring the contours of his twig when I wandered off to do a few other things.

Later, I returned to the salvia, and he was gone. Perhaps he had some other spot in mind to begin his journey into that good night. Meanwhile, down the street, and away from the house, I could hear the murmurings of the busy inhabitants of my own eco-system -- children and their parents, gradually emerging from their homes, to enjoy this relatively mild evening and the celebration of yet another All Hallows Eve.

This day is done, and the darkness falls from the wings of Night
- Longfellow