Building Sails for West Blatchington Windmill
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Peter Casebow was commissioned by West Blatchington Windmill to rebuild their "fake" sails. The Board agreed he could use the mill field and several other volunteers helped out. Wood was ordered from Wenban-Smith and, on 8th April 2011, in the photograph, above, Dave Fox and Peter Casebow can be seen measuring and marking-up the laminated larch for the uplongs at Wenban's so that it can be cut to shape on their sawmill-sized band saw. The lad's at Wenban's cut the wood and transported it up to the Mill Field.
Once the timber was unloaded onto the Mill Field, Peter and his team began the task of building the sails.
On 20th May 2011, Peter Casebow and Roy Beynon were cutting mortices in the timbers. First the mortice positions were marked onto the timber. Then, Peter and Roy drilled right through with a one inch drill, making two holes within the area to be cut out. Finally, a chisel was used to cut out the remainder of the mortice.
Later in the project there were problems with delamination of the timber which Peter resolved with Wenban-Smith.