BY LANDY ERLICK
The Jay Ice House restoration process is well under way (to catch up, see The 3 R’s: Restoration, Recovery, Revival). Last week, the doors were spliced, painted with a base coat, and safeguarded with borate crystals. Now, the connecting hasps have been added – tinted bright red with primer – and the wood is all pieced together.
The doors will soon make their way out of the workshop and onto their rightful hinges! The task is not as simple as just putting them in place, though. The wooden casement into which the doors fit has also aged and rotted. It had been rebuilt and recut. The ornate, aged stone wall that surrounds this structure actually creates quite an intricate obstacle.
What is the solution to the irregularities of the weathered stone? A scribing tool is the key to securely reinstalling the ice house doors and ensuring their stability. This device has a pencil and a metal rod on either side, not unlike a compass used in a geometry. The metal rod follows the nonuniform line of the stone wall, while the pencil traces that same pattern onto the wood casement, allowing the entire element to mold perfectly into the threshold.
Sporting the same crimson shade as the door hinges, two small castings will also take their place in the final touches of this project. These vintage hardware pieces, fitting the top corners of the ice house doors, will be returned to their original green color. The bottom two castings, though, will be replaced by a common pintle hinge as the original pieces were lost before the birth of the Jay Heritage Center.
The ice house certainly maintains many of its authentic components – boasting a ratio of about 80% original to 20% modified. The doors should be hanging the end of this week (weather permitting), ushering in a new era at the Jay Ice House.
Jay Heritage Center at the Jay Estate 