Wind Powered Saw Mill

Impressive instead of using a circular saw blade the choose to convert circular to linear motion. I think the 1 meter per hour rate average rate of feed would drive me nuts but that's just me. If they get 4 boards per station and have 3 stations that 12 meters per hour. They have to shut down and resharpen every 50 hours so that only 600 linear feet. If the board are averaging 8 inches wide and are 1 inch thick that about 50 board feet between sharpening. It would take a long time to get enough lumber to build a house.

I just realized I did the calculation based on 1 foot per hour so actually around 39 linear feet per hour or about 2000 linear feet per sharpening. around 2000 board feet.
 
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Well some of this type of stuff is supposed to be in my genes, my great grandfather built mills for people in the Uk in Bury St Edmund back in the day.

My one and only real family heirloom passed to me by my dad is his journal in which he lists all his customers and the charges for various work he did on their mill.

Earliest date in the book is 1889 and it goes through to 1910.

Years back i used google and managed to trace one of his mills working as a exhibit in a hotel that was now on the property. Pretty cool. He also shared a patent for a cart mechanism that would clean the streets of horse manure back in the day when horsedrawn carriages were common and poop on the street was an issue.
Have a newspaper article where the Mayor of Amsterdam came over to Uk to review buying the invention for Amsterdam.
 
Those are always fascinating to me. An old friend of mine, who is a Master Quaker Carpenter was on the team that remodeled Benjamin Franklin's house and a nearby gristmill powered by water. Principles are similar. Back shortly after I retired, I apprenticed under him learning carpentry skills for about 2 years. Best two years I ever spent, I think. One of the projects I had to do was assist in building a horse drawn cart. He built the wheels that were spoked and I had to do the rest. Had to do the everything, including the axle with hand tools only. Did the axle with drawn knives. Wish I still had photos of some of those things we built. They got lost in a shuffle somewhere.
 
Those of you who live or vacation in New England have a chance to see a similar, but water powered saw mill running in Old Sturbridge Village in South Massachusetts just North of the Connecticut State line. When I was there some years ago they were sawing an 18" diameter log into planks. The down forces were so great that the mill floor was moving up and down about an inch with every down stroke of the saw. They were only running a single blade, but it had very coarse teeth and the forward movement of the log as about an inch per blade stroke. Here is a link for the saw mill, but a Google search for Old Sturbridge Village will bring up many links related, such as what else is there, directions, etc. For the saw mill, see https://www.osv.org/sawmill.


Charley
 
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