Posts from the ‘Grain Bin’ Category
Pictured is the second floor seed blender which is the only piece of Mill equipment on the second floor. Most of the grain bins were removed in the 1990’s for the antique mall and some of the equipment was sold to Zanella Milling in West Sunbury which still operates a mill. In the enlarged photo, you can or can’t see a number of interesting facets of the Mill. There is a small selector there and a hatch that opens to a passage that went to the third floor. The hatch was big enough for a person so I was planning a secret ladder here to get to the third floor. Also back in the SW corner of the second floor was a large grain bin we had converted to a storage room. Daniel removed the sloped floor and we filled it with Simplicity pattern cabinets from Joann fabrics. Directly behind the blender is the wall of the grain bin with the climbing wall.
Here are some parting shots of the third floor. The room beyond the Dekalb sign was used to store chairs but also had a 200 gallon backup water tank. The grain bin in the spotlight is a very small grain bin that still has gain in it. The only one I know of in the Mill still with grain. The last picture is of my friends from FAWM.
The first picture shows the studio in a grain bin room before the studio was installed. And beyond that grain bin was another room which we cut into. Since this bin was in the SW corner of the building we installed a window behind one of the louvers in the Mill facade. The window was the one closest to the bunkhouse at the third floor level. David is shown cutting out the reinforcing rods that held the bins together. Then we started installing a second floor in the grain bin. This is one of our unfinished projects.
February certainly turned out to be an interesting month. When I started this 28 days of blogging I had no idea that the Mill would burn five days into the story. I’m repeating the February first blog today because I’m now doing the Mill from Top to Bottom and the Recording Studio in the Grain Bin is part of the third floor. We thank all of you who have shown so much love and support over the last month. Spring is coming and with it rebirth. Please pray for us as we plan what’s next for the Mill. The Emlenton Mill, built in 1875, housed a mill museum, an ice cream shop, a bunkhouse hostel, an Emporium that sold antiques, crafts and books and a number of secrets. One of these secrets is a recording studio in a gain bin. Hidden away in a converted grain bin, on the third floor of the Mill, is a recording studio control room from the 1970s. It was originally located on the music practice floor of the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. It was built by myself and some friends from the campus radio station WRCT. The Mill has a large number of grain bins which were used to store the different grains that were processed at the Mill. They vary in size from the size of a closet to the size of a railroad box car. The grain bin we chose for the studio is a small room located just off the main area of the third floor and required very little alteration. Most grain bins are built with sloped floors so the grain would gravity feed to the center of the bin where the output chute was located. This grain bin only required a new floor to support the studio.
The Mill had bats, especially the upper floors. We tried to seal the cracks the best we could but in the end we built them a home on the outside of the building. Mitch Bray built a custom bat box complete with a batman logo and David painted it and hung it. The fourth floor was filed with wonderful old signs as well as two sets of shaker screens for sorting grain.
Here is a quick rundown of the equipment in the Grain Bin Studio. The speakers are Acoustic Research AR3a. The tape recorder is a four track Teac using quarter inch magnetic tape. To the right of the recorder is a hundred watt lunchbox amplifier designed by Stan Kriz. To the left is the meter head/power supply/headphone amplifier for the board. I built the mixing board by hand out of Aluminum stock. The electronics which is all rack mountable includes compressors, Stan’s 90db version of a dolby unit, reverbs, and matrixes. The center section originally held the board at the left and then later held the Teac board. the red back board is from a Three Rivers Computer booth. The tall rack holds the WRCT green machines that provided late night music. Originally it was a data logger from the Pittsburgh airport. The small rack is the six track recorder, Ampex deck and electronics. The poster is a Maxfield Parrish that hung in the original CMU studio.
These pictures show a typical grain bin at the Emlenton Mill. At the bottom of the vertical picture you can see the sloping wall has been cut away revealing the horizontal sub floor and the supporting framework for the sloped walls. The basketball is sitting at the very bottom of the bin and covers the output chute. The horizontal picture shows the size of the bin and the three iron rods that keep the sides from bowing out due to the weight of the grain. The chute that passes through the bin and the floor is from a different bin and is just passing through. Tomorrow more about the 1970’s studio, WRCT and CMU.
My son, David, suggested that I write a blog about the Emlenton Mill and since this is February I thought I would start by writing about sound and recording, which I love. February, you see, is the month of FAWM (February Album Writing Month). For more information check out http://www.fawm.org. I figure that writing a blog every day is a little like writing a song every other day, except much easier. So, welcome to the Emlenton Mill blog. I’ll try to work in the Mill along with my love of recording.
The Emlenton Mill, built in 1875, houses a mill museum, an ice cream shop, a bunkhouse hostel, an Emporium that sells antiques, crafts and books and a number of secrets. One of these secrets is a recording studio in a gain bin.
Hidden away in a converted grain bin, on the third floor of the Mill, is a recording studio control room from the 1970s. It was originally located on the music practice floor of the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. It was built by myself and some friends from the campus radio station WRCT. But more about that another day. The Mill has a large number of grain bins which were used to store the different grains that were processed at the Mill. They vary in size from the size of a closet to the size of a railroad box car. The grain bin we chose for the studio is a small room located just off the main area of the third floor and required very little alteration. Most grain bins are built with sloped floors so the grain would gravity feed to the center of the bin where the output chute was located. This grain bin only required a new floor to support the studio.
The Emlenton Mill 