The New Olde Mill

The Olde Mill

Nobody makes custom hollow ceiling beams and fireplace mantels like we do at The Olde Mill, a new wood shop working out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The Olde Mill offers hollow, lightweight alternatives to solid wooden ceiling beams and fireplace mantels, created with a custom technique unreplicated anywhere else.

the mantel stained

the mantel raw

Our fireplace mantel is lightweight (one person can lift one up alone, and install one by themselves in five minutes), but ease of installation isn't the only benefit. Our whole crafting process is done by hand with a meticulous attention to detail. Most hollow beams and mantels are made with two mistakes:

1) they leave an unsightly seem where the sides meet, and

2) they don't use real end caps to make the two end sides.

Most hollow beams just use the same grain as the long sides, and so you end up with a product that looks fake. Our beam sides are miter locked together in order to craft seamless edges, and our end caps are cut right off of the same logs we cut the sides of your beam or mantel from.  As far as we know, nobody in the country makes and sells hollow mantels with real end grain end caps or hollow ceiling beams made out of real antique wood with no seems.

And because our beams and mantels are lightweight, they are ideal for retrofitting. If you want to add ceiling beams to any room in your house, you can do so without having to do major reconstruction to support the weight of solid beams.

our beams and mantel in action

These pictures are from one of our first completed orders; they recently finished their new renovation, which turned out great. We are going to go to their house for more photos soon.

Trusses (trust us)

Like the inner working of quantum physics or high-level strategy in basketball, I think I was aware of trusses without ever really actively thinking about them; I built a set of trusses as my second job at The Olde Mill, thinking that they would just be ceiling beams.

Our first set of trusses, after installation

                  

Like all of our beams, our truss system is actually hollow, which is great for installation (you save a ton of labor costs, and don’t have to rent forklifts, like you would with a solid beam), but our trusses and beams are not for structural support.

    

While building these trusses, Richard would use words (ridge beam, king post, corbel, etc.) that I was unfamiliar with, so it seemed like some research was in order.

Trusses, in ceilings, bridges, and radio towers, are used due to their ability to bear heavy loads, and for their aesthetic appeal.

A bunch of different truss set-ups. All easily realized with our hollow box beams.

   

King Truss

The king truss is probably the most basic and simple part of the truss. It is the middle piece of the truss, which supports the top and also serves as the resting point for the struts (the diagonal beams that finish the triangle - a very strong load-bearing shape in design). The tie beam is the long beam going across the bottom, with the principal rafter running parallel with the ceiling.

King posts and struts.

                                                    

Our first truss system was a classic King post setup:

Queen post

If you take away the single king post, and replace it with two symmetrical posts, you get a Queen Post truss.

Instead of one central post, we have two, one set to each side.

       

These are just a couple of the simplest truss styles. If you aren’t relying on the trusses for the actual support for your ceiling, you could make just about any design/configuration with our hollow box beams and trusses. You could get very complicated, or you could make your own design. But like perfect Fibonacci spirals in conch shells or the Golden Ratio in human faces, I think a good truss design will keep some of the honesty of practical geometry, even though it might not be strictly required in a non-supportive truss system. 

If you are thinking of installing ceiling beams, think about trusses too. Especially with high, vaulted ceilings, a truss system can bring an architectural element to your space, and bring a warm, natural feel to a modern space. Our hollow lightweight box beams made of 150 year old antique pine make designing and implementing your trusses super easy. Check us out at The Olde Mill. 


 

Blade Folding

Easier said, than done

These are the blades that we use on our Timberking 1600, a pretty great sawmill that we are still learning all the tricks to:

 We got in some more Long Leaf pine posts that we re-milled into veneers to make our hollow reclaimed wood ceiling beams. Last Saturday, we had some bad luck with blades that we thought were still sharp, but were just gunked up with sawdust and pitch from the pine we are cutting. So last week I soaked one blade in mineral spirits each night, and cleaned it off in the morning. But we just couldn’t get a straight cut with these blades, so we sent them out for resharpening, which requires you to fold the blade up and secure it with a zip tie or wire for shipping. If you, like me, have never really messed with replaceable sawmill blades, then this will help you when you find yourself folding a 14 foot saw blade.

Today I learned that folding a blade, if you don’t know the right technique, can be pretty tricky. I tried to hold the blade down on the ground with my foot, and then sort of wrestle it into the tri-folded shape. This worked some of the time, but more often I ended up with a blade pretzel that would whip me across the arms. After snapping myself on the arm a couple of times, I watched the video on folding blades on the DVD that came with our Timberking sawmill. Like everything in a woodshop, blade folding is almost impossible if you don’t know the right technique. If you guess, you will probably guess wrong.

 

Trying to wrestle the blade into shape.

 

Here is how you fold a 14 foot sawmill blade (wear gloves!)

1. Hold blade out horizontally, with your palms facing outwards:
2.  Turn your wrists in:                          
3. And catch the end of the blade folding towards you and finish the fold:
4. Then secure the blades with a zip tie:  
5. And you are ready to store or ship your blades.