Summer 2010 - Watermill Blog

The summer seasson was fairly gentle after the preparations for our Grand Opening.

The team continued to meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays but work was much  more relaxed.

The dressing of the downstraem pair of stones was finished and the stones replaced. Unfortunatley the repair to the stone spindle bearing meant that the runner stone wouldn't lower onto the bedstone, and we had to take them apart  again to sort the problem. Once that was done we could turn our attention to the overhead drive to this pair of stones. We had already got a suitable bevel gear, courtesy of Pirbright Castings Ltd, and we had enough shafting to connect the new bevel gear to the outside of the mill.

The next requirement was something to power the drive. Yet again our network of supporters came to the rescue and we were given a Petter M two stroke engine, rated at 6 1/2 HP. It hadn't run for over twenty years, but it was only a single cylinder, how hard could it be. We have tinkered with this engine all through the summer and finally got it to start at the end of September. The next thing to learn is how to stop it. Pulling the plug lead off just made it run rough until it ran out of fuel. Fortunatley we hadn't put much fuel in so no damage was done, but it was an  interesting couple of minutes.

Another gift that we brought back into use was the Denbigh pillar drill. We have fitted this with a modern electric motor which drives through the original belt pulleys. This proving to a useful piece of kit, with plenty of grunt for heavier drilling jobs. There is enough torque to seriously modify cheap woodworking bits, as Richard has already discovered. Away from the care and maintenance jobs, we have had a useful number of visitors with an number of groups making appointments via the website as well as by other contact methods. Of course, the mill has been running at every hillclimb meeting through the season, but only during the lunch intervals. As the front gate to the mill opens directly onto the return road we have to close down during competion for safety reasons. At the end of the season we had a couple of fairly major maintenance tasks to do but we all felt we had had a good summer.

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