I have received a number of inquiries as to what that gadget is in the lower left hand corner of an image I posted on this blog on December 23, 2017. The image above is taken from that post.
Below I have a better image of the contraption I build over the last few decades.
In this image you can clearly see the pine tree that the treehouse sits under. The treehouse is about where the bell is located. This is a cupola that I built. It has a very interesting history.
Many years ago I saw a weather vane on top of an old New England church in Wilton. CT. I went back to the church and sketched the weather vane in great detail. That winter I made a much larger template and copied it onto a sheet of copper. I very carefully cut out the intricate pattern using a combination of drill bits, a coping saw, and files. When that part was completed I soldered on a vertical copper pipe so that I could mount the weather vane on a shaft so that it could rotate in the wind. Finally, I learned how to put a verdigris patina on the metal and that part was finished. I then located a base with the four wind directions already crafted and mounted the weathervane on the shaft. I had built an octagonal roof over a well at our home in CT and mounted the weathervane above that.
Years later I acquired the cupola that was from an 1850s CT barn. There was no copper visible on the cupola, but I knew it was beneath the tar that had been painted onto it for some unknown reason. I carefully removed the tar and repatinaed the cupola with the same verdigris technique I used on the weathervane. The cupola sat for many years, since I did not have a good place to put it. I did buy some small recycled double hung 6 over 6 windows that I was going to use for the walls of the cupola below the copper part.
We acquired the bell from my wife's father who had the bell in his yard for many years when they moved and didn't want it anymore.
Then, about five years ago I had built a pergola on top of a deck on my house and then came to the realization that I could install the whole thing up there. The image shows the completed project.
My wife convinced me not to use the windows since she said they would be impossible to clean and would detract from the beauty of the cupola after a while.
Interestingly, it is those very windows, 20 years after I bought them, that are the windows I used in the treehouse.
Talk about recycling.
I hope this answers the question.
