Rick Chapman, Dave Pearce, Kelvin Law and Brian Hunt, were back on Wednesday 23 July to Dress the stones at Woodbridge Tide Mill Museum
After the usual Health & Safety briefing and preparing the area with safety tape and warnings for the public, the team addressed the task at hand. First the regions on the millstone surface that needed attention had to be identified. Like pretty much all of this process, this was done in a traditional way. A straight plank was daubed with red paint along one edge and this was dragged across the surface so that paint was heaviest on the most elevated part of the stone. To flatten the stone these were the areas to be reduced.
A combination tool is used to maintain the grinding surfaces of millstones. It is made of a thrift (wooden handle) and bill (double-ended chisel that fits into the handle), the experts (and Rick!) set to dressing or re-cutting grooves in the millstones.
After the runner stone (the one that sits on top and rotates) they set to the bedstone (the static one at the bottom). This turned out to be off true, it was about a centimetre lower of one side. Wedges were cut to level the stone and thrifts and bills were deployed again.
All in all a busy, hot and dusty days work. The team will now reseat the dressed stones and start all over again on the second set of stones that run off the millpond.