Structure History

Very interesting story and very nice building that you constructed.

What caught my eye was the Baird Machine Co. We have in our town, the U.S. Baird Machine co. that has been here 164 years.

Roger

That is going to be great model carefully handcrafted, historically correct and with family ties.

What can be better than that.

Thank you for sharing this undertaking with us.

And keep us posted.

Ditto on the very interesting! This is a great way to incorporate local history on a layout or diorama, and preserve the history for future generations. I would love to attempt building the Huber breaker in Ashley. Although, I don't know where I would put it. The property encompasses twenty two acres. Looking forward to your continued progress.

Don

Very, very cool story.  It could be made into a nice one-hour documentary on the History channel, by the way. 

Great model, too.  

Thank you so much for taking the time to post this . . . 

Enjoyed the story.  I'm glad you were finally able to get permission to go on the site.  It really helps to confirm your photographic findings with actual measurements.  Just make sure your chimney has a good foundation.

Dennis

You're not the only "history nerd" in this hobby.  Just an interest in "fallen flag"

railroads puts you there, hiking abandoned railroads, hunting surviving stations and

other structures, and just this past Sunday I was in a small town historical society

museum (that has a restored N5C sitting outside it, and an HO layout in the basement).  I was interested in the auto first constructed nearby in 1891, and once built in Anderson, Ind., with photos displayed of its large factory. Certainly that

"different" tile industry is intereting and we want to see the completed project.

Simply outstanding.  One of the really neat facets of model railroading tracking down the prototype right to the ground.

I fully understand.......

My Dad, once retired, started hunting down local history. And he has written 3 books so far on the subject. We now take trips around the county looking for remains of logging railroads and their support systems. We have found a lot of cool stuff....so yes....I get it!

So do I  -"get it"!! 

How satisfying to track down and model the best representation you can.  Excellent project.  Nice structure building.  Please let us see how you integrate this into your layout.  Thank you for sharing this.

So, there was a kiln about 100' away from a very tall chimney. My father remembers the kiln, it had a round top. So what did this all mean? A downdraft beehive kiln would have a round top, and an underground air shaft to a very tall chimney. So, a partially collapsed tunnel was found that appeared to run from the kiln to the chimney.

we aren't talking about a giant tunnel, here I am partially inside... 

Some more questions found someone in town that remembers crawling through the tunnel; my uncle. Figures with this being located on the edge of a swamp known to have eastern massasauga rattlesnake's, my family members were the ones playing in the tunnel. 

I left out a piece of info- This Tile Mill was located right next to the property that my grandparents farmed. My family grew up right next door.

Here is a downdraft kiln...

and another kiln, but not ours 

I started building the boiler room out of foamcore, and I will cover the foamcore with plastic pattern sheets of block. Here is the north wall of the boiler room- if you look REAL carefully, you will see a concrete pier, pretty high. A poured babbit bearing on top, so this boiler room had a steam engine with a line shaft. 

I will post more updates as I progress.
I forgot to mention something else- after I constructed and sided each wall of the main building, I put some wood stain in a $20 HF Airbrush. Did a slaphappy job of neatly & evenly applying the color. I don't intend on weathering this structure, after all, how much weather could it have if it was only producing for 3-5 years?

I found this guy online shoveling charcoal into the hearths around a downdraft kiln. Our kiln had 10 hearths and I found out that a similar sized kiln to ours would take 6 days to complete a burn. SIX days of around the clock kiln babysitting to maintain the temperature of the kiln simply by using dampers. Wow.

so without investing weeks into building a kiln, and not having access to a wood lathe, how would someone recreate the dome on the quick & cheap? The answer was in my garage. I literally tripped over it.

The silver cover to my coleman heater. My cover doesn't have the nub as shown in the picture, so a perfect repurposed item. I will use cardstock to build up the side, put the painted dome on, (in a brick color) and a quick kiln on the easy & cheap.

WAY over the top cool! I suffer from the same addiction. More posts to follow. May the Lord help us history addicts, aka: Reductionist Reconstructionist Architects! 

Great posting.  Look forward to the follow up.

With mention of missasauga creepie-crawlies, I thought this would be in southern

Ohio.  Bloomfield there is kind of a tourist target, with the Wilds outdoor zoo,

and John Glenn birthplace in the area, just off I-70, but...Lockwood is just east

of NORTH Bloomfield, in NE Ohio, so I am guessing that was the location of this tile plant.

Apparently Ohio is still a home for these, and fairly wide spread.

They are known to populate part of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, located east of

Dayton, Ohio along a river, and there are signs warning of them on a state reserve

north of Springfield, Ohio.  What may have been one I straddled in my car leaving

one of the flood dam preserves north of Dayton.  In my rearview mirror he had his

tail up and looked annoyed. In history books, I have read they were a hazard for

pioneers clearing the "Black Swamp" area south of Toledo in NW Ohio.  Being an

old farm boy, I always watch where I put my big feet in an undeveloped area when

tracking old rail lines or photographing structures.  That tile plant I would only visit

in the winter, on  a cold day, with most of the underbrush dead.