I wonder if Daniel can see the mill now.
The old turbine that we excavated from a side hill in Maine was lowered into place after much straining, blocking, and running around. George’s careful measurements and minute calculations paid off, because it fitted perfectly in the large hole cut in the bottom of the wheel pit. We had to call upon the machinist to fashion a coupling in order to fit the old coupling still left on the shaft coming down through the first floor into the wheel pit from the gears above.
While this was being done, George, Dick McElroy, and I managed to make a decent pen gate with the necessary worm gear attached to it so that we could block off the water in the flume and raise the gate when necessary.
At this point I happened to mention to one of my friends that I would like to find, somewhere, a metal wheel similar to a freight car brake wheel that we could use on the shaft to raise and lower the pen gate. A few days later, my friend left at the mill a real old timer. It was a wheel which was about two and one-half feet in diameter, and which was nicely adapted to the top of the rod of the pen gate. This wheel suspiciously looked similar to a wheel that would toll a bell on a church steeple, and when I suggested the possibility of this to my friend, he merely smiled and walked away.
X
We have used to a great extent Oliver Evans’ “The Young Mill-Wright and Miller’s Guide.” This book was printed about 1800, and I think I have referred to it before, but it has proved invaluable to us in the course of our work. The words and references in the book may have meant something to the millers one hundred years ago, but not us poor amateurs of 1961, the words millseat, flutterwheels, cockheads, cubocks, to say nothing of “tailflour,” confused us no end, but on closer reading and more attention to the details of the book, we did finally make some sense from it.
Under Article 108 in this ancient volume is found the following:
“Of Regulating the Feed and Water in Grinding.”