Watermill Blog -  80 Years On
9th September 2008

This is a milestone entry in our watermill blog. After a gap of at least 80 years one of the stones has turned under water power.

The team today was depleted by holidays but Colin, John, Richard, Kim, Bob and Finton watched with pride and delight as the upstream stone spun freely at about half speed.

There was more than that to the day of course. The weather has been very wet since last Thursday and a lot of debris has washed over the spillway and needed clearing off the grill.

The pool is a very muddy colour and we will need to wait until it clears a bit before we can tell how much it has silted up and whether we need to have a dredging party.

In the past bad weather has meant lots of mud around the mill but this has come to an end. John, Kim, Bob and Finton spent most of their day levelling the ground and spreading gravel, making sure of the drainage as they went. The result looks excellent.

We now wipe our feet as we leave the mill to step on the new gravel!

Colin and Richard worked to replace the runner stone with additional muscle being provided by Bob and Finton as the need arose.

With the stone back in place we found that the mesh between the spur gear and the stone nut had become very tight. It seems that the tentering adjustment, raising or lowering the runner stone, does change the mesh slightly.

Work with timber and a large jack adjusted the position of the centre post and spur gear resulting in a much better mesh. Colin pedalled the waterwheel round carefully while Richard checked for any problems. It was looking good so we decided to go for a water powered run. Click on the video below to see what happened.

After that it was just time to go home, grinning like Cheshire Cats.

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