2024 Restoration Update 16
Spoiler Alert!! Mostert’s Mill has been completely restored and is operating fully and smoothly! So this will be your last Update. But before jumping ahead, let’s look at the important finishing steps.
Before the tun (the cylindrical casing around the millstones) and the rest of the nearby “furniture” could be assembled, there had to be a hole for the ground meal to escape downwards to the meal spout, and a sweeper attached to the runner stone to sweep it to the hole from wherever it comes out from between the stones. One photo shows Andy Selfe cutting the hole through the curb and the floor for the meal to escape., and the next shows the sweeper.
Then Charel Rossouw and Juan Blom could bring the rest of the Furniture and assemble it, the shoe, hopper and sack table.
There was some setting up to do on the lantern pinion, done by measuring from a strip of wood attached to the sheers. The cogs and rungs had to be lubricated with beeswax. You can see John Hammer melting a chunk of beeswax with a hot-air gun.
The last part of the furniture was the meal spout, here Charel and bearded Juan are fitting it.
We then tested the sail cloths and adjusted the ropes.
By the end of February we were ready to test milling, Johann Mostert brought us bags of wheat which we could use, but it needed winnowing, so we sent the message out and found one from a farm in Klipdale. It needed to be restored first, but it enjoys pride of place within the Mill, and the ‘from the farm’ wheat needs this process done! We started the Mill on a day with a good breeze and milled enough for Adri Schütz of Mt Elsewhere Bakery .to bake enough bread to feed the crowds at the two Opening Ceremonies. The Mill performed superbly!
Our Dutch visitors had arrived – Sven Verbeek, Gerard Wijngaarten and Leo Elbers, who had taken such a leading role in the restoration by setting up the crowd-funding, organising the sail cloths (and bringing them out in their luggage last year) and procuring the used millstones. They brought us another gift of a special chisel, called a bill, for dressing the millstones. They are standing next to a watermill in the photo.
We were ready for our two Opening events, the first, under a sunny blue sky a few days before the third anniversary of the fire, was for those who actually applied their woodworking, blacksmithing, granite working, thatching and other skills in the restoration.
The second, a week later was for donors and Honorary Life Members, most of whom have donated twenty years or more worth of annual membership fees. Pieter van der Poel who is our link to the Rupert Foundation Historiese Huise which underwrote the restoration cost, was present, and both he and Johann Mostert fired miniature (but very loud) cannons as a salute (they are holding their cannon-firing certificates below, Pieter on the right). Johann, one of many Mosterts present, donated the wheat which was baked into bread for the two Ceremonies. Chairman John Hammer’s Scottie dog Jamie inspects an aroma in the foreground.
Now the Mill is officially ‘open’ and the plan is to open it to the public on the third Saturday of every month, weather permitting, not necessarily for milling. That is likely to happen on occasions when the wind is suitable.
Photo credit: Johan du Preez
For detailed information on the whole restoration process, please visit https://mostertsmillafterthefire.blogspot.com/?view=magazine compiled by Andy Selfe.
Yours sincerely – the Mostert’s Mill Restoration Team
John Hammer, Chairman: Friends of Mostert’s Mill
Andy Selfe, Master Millwright
John Wilson-Harris, Heritage Architect
Clive Thorpe, Treasurer: Friends of Mostert’s Mill
