Today is the start of a near week-long event at The Fort at No 4. I believe it is called, “The Rendezvous.” It is an 18th century reenactment event.
Ally will be there the entire time, she fired the bake oven last night to get it ready to use today.
This is one of those things that is/was a lost art.
A bake oven is a brick enclosure that is part of the hearth and chimney. To use it, you heat it with a wood fire until it is “hot enough”, then you let the fire die down or transfer the fire to the hearth.
At that point, you can put your bread or pies or whatever else you are baking in the bake oven. The residual heat from the bricks then bakes everything.
And here is the lost art, you have to prefire the oven. If you attempt to bake the same day you fire, the oven isn’t going to work as well as it should. The reasons is simple and make perfect sense, once you know.
In the 1700s, those bake ovens were used daily or nearly so. They were always dry, they were always a bit warm.
Today, those ovens only get fired when we have a multi day event with people staying in the cabins. Between times, not only do the bricks cool to ambient temperature, they also absorb water. Lots of it.
That first firing is mostly to drive the water out and to bring the entire mass of bricks to a reasonable temperature.
Lighting
When we arrived yesterday, the cabin was dark, by modern standards. Moving in and out of the cabin, talking to people, your eyes don’t fully adjust.
After the last goodbyes, Ally and I sat down to eat dinner.
We lit two taper candles.
That was enough. The light from the windows was fading, but casting long shadows in the cabin.
I don’t know if I could have read a printed page, but it was close.
But here is perspective for you. When we are watching TV at night, we have two 60 watt equivalent lights running. When we are using the kitchen, even in daylight, we will have 5 60 watt equivalent lights running.
Each light puts out around 800 lumens. A standard candle produces 13 lumens. The “moonlight” mode on my EDC flashlight is 15 lumens.
Because we were burning beeswax candles, we were getting around 30 lumens from those two candles.
And it made a huge difference. It felt like the cabin was alive and ready.
My biggest issue with being at the Fort after dark is how quiet it is.
I’m sitting at my desk. I can hear the keys clatter, I can hear the disk drives moving in my computer, the fans spinning in my computer, the sound of CPU fans in the next room, the hum of something.
When I used to babysit the Cray X/MP, I took to wearing ear pro when I was going to be in the machine room for any length of time. I was in the machine room when we had a power outage. The sound of silence in the room hurt.
Sometimes it feels like that at The Fort.
I’m currently working on a new website for them. It will be much more than just a website, but it is consuming much of my time. I still have to make a 4 TPI acme nut, lead screw, cap, and handle. I’m hoping to work on that this weekend.
I need to grind a right-hand external 4TPI acme cutter for the lead screw. This will be fun!
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