It's some sort of press with a heavy wheel that spins back and forth and presses on the work using a heavy screw.
No audio needed, just watch about 10 seconds
That's a "fly press": a flywheel screw press. No, they aren't common in the US. Apparently they've been around for a long time in forge shops in other parts of the world, including Europe.
I never saw one but I remember seeing photos when I was an editor at American Machinist, back in the '70s.
New England has preserved some of that history. We took a school trip to this place not long after it was restored and they demonstrated the waterwheels and trip hammer and explained the tedious process of squeezing the slag out of a bloom of iron, one of which they had on display.
-jsw
Interesting.
Are there other regional variations of "basic" machines like presses that still do the same job in the end?
Sort of like how germans were obsessed with slotted screws for absolutely everything forever?
The house I was raised in, was built with exterior walls of two layers of white pine planks on end. these planks were 24 to 36 inches wide, 2
1/2 inches thick and up to 20 feet long. The trees were cut on the property and floated down the river to a water powered mill much like the Taylor Mill with the vertical saw powered by an undershot wheel. This mill combined the saw mill, a planing mill and a grist mill. I never saw the mill but remember well the stone fillled cribs of the dam and flume. We used to use the cast grinding plates from the grist mill as a boat anchor. The site was washed away in the early '50's when an ice jam combined with driftwood in the forebay of the dam gave way and spread everything downstream.
This private NH Christian high school teaches both male and female students the skills needed to restore or duplicate New England structures from the 1700 and 1800's in their original style.
My sister and her husband have repaired and extended their 17xx Maine farm house using pegged post and beam construction, though not with timbers that large.
I sized the bandsaw mill I built for 20" logs based on the largest trees left in the neighborhood and have had to chainsaw slabs off the stump end of oaks that had been leaning over the house to fit it. Instead of full width planks I've been cutting each log section into two 6" x 12" by 12' beams to store the wood in the form of shed frames. The logs and rough cut beams (cants) dry evenly without cracking too much if the ends are painted with melted toilet ring wax, which unlike paraffin wax is flexible enough to not crack open as the weather changes.
-jsw
Really cool.
The sawmill was a commercial operation. I didn't realize it was powered by water until they opened a hatch in the floor and showed me the Francis turbine in the stream under the building. The dam, pond and an ice house were on the other side of the road.
I remember thinking the hammer drive didn't seem built to withstand much use, as I had made toy wooden models of machinery and seen how fast wood rubbing surfaces wear.
The Taylor mill had more iron reinforcement on its wooden linkages and much of it had worked loose, making the operation quite clanky. The operator told me it had been assembled from salvaged mill parts and wasn't really historically accurate. IIRC the fittings had been cast instead of forged.
While he watched the saw the operator was splitting wooden shingles with a ragged excuse for a froe. There was no maintenance fund to buy a decent one. My first attempt to make them a froe is far below museum quality. At least I got the parts I'd collected for a heat treating oven assembled and working.
My father had an old Audel Millwrights and Mechanics Guide from his time in the cotton mills so I had an idea of the work involved. If you mastered all the skills in that book you could recreate civilization.
-jsw
My grandmother had the traditional New Hampshire accent but my mother didn't, and my father had completely lost his southern Appalachian accent, both before television. I think WW2 stirring the younger people all together had a considerable effect. Chuck Yeager's backwoods twang was said to be incomprehensible at first, then after he gained fame many pilots imitated his drawl on the radio. In Atlanta I noticed that network TV announcers spoke in the "standard" Midwestern accent.
My real question is whether or not Canadians allowed themselves to be influenced by USian speech. My impression is that like Quebecois we are tolerated but not imitated.
-jsw
The Germans who spoke English sounded American too. Generally the well-educated foreign English speakers I've met, such as from Argentina and Africa, had British accents. I don't expect American to be the world standard.
The Boston area Puritan colonists weren't such extreme Separatists.
Most excellent! They'll have a very interesting, well-paid career for life. I watched a couple timber frame class workshops on YT and have always loved the look of timber framed buildings.
Cool. Don't the tree huggers crusade against the old-growth destruction? They sue every single timber sale in Oregon nowadays, without missing one.
Yeah, that was over the top.
I wonder what's in those "wax" rings today.
Besides the standard wooden wheel style used on old mills, I've seen Pelton style used in small hydro. Francis is new to me. I saw the design for Jonval turbines, thinking that it looked considerably lower in efficiency. I never did search for the differences.
Many of the small dams were financed by the selling of the electrical output from their hydro systems. I've been meaning to go see our local Lost Creek Lake/William L. Jess Dam hydro. Free tours if you call ahead. 49mW output.
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