Sharpening Wheel

The new Tuesday Photo Challenge is Wheel.

A bit of an easy challenge for someone who spent the best part of a decade shooting a variety of motorsports in the 1970s and 1980s. So I decided to go in a completely different direction and go with a nature photo of a bird.

You may wonder what a photo of a Western Jackdaw (Coloeus monedula) has to do with the challenge. It’s what the bird is standing on, a grindstone also known as a grinding wheel or sharpening wheel.

This particular grinding wheel was used by my maternal grandfather who used it to sharpen his scythe and sickle. He was lenghtsman, employed by the local council to maintain a length of road. Part of the job was keeping grass and weeds down along the verge amongst other things.

When he retired the wheel fell out of use and became a garden ornament which explains the condition and colour of the wheel.