61. 11th October 2008 Compagnes Drift Mill, Sluice Gate and Milling

Hello all,

Last week's report led to a lively e-discussion with Stephen Morley who works for Mr Mittal.... (Manager..... ArcelorMittal South Africa...... Air, steam and power generation... Infrastructure | Engineering) who is very interested in Mill restorations. We discussed whether the rack-and-pinion system I envisaged would work and how it could be improved. A small amount of modification to my first ideas, and, well, it works!

I first had to adjust the mounting point of one of the chains and also weld in a spreader bar at the top, so that the two chains are now parallel to one another and in line with the frame in which the sluice gate slides. Then I just tacked the brackets for the pillow-blocks onto the frame, with the sprockets in full engagement. Stephen suggested trying it out lying down first (it not me!):

There it is open. I used the wrench on the left above, and I could operate it with half the length of the handles. Then I raised the whole assembly vertical and tried again:

There it is open. I needed the full length of the wrench, about a radius of 500mm. I reckon a wheel of some kind will work and look better than a crank-handle. It will also need a lock to prevent it running down, so I measured up for a catch to swing down into the teeth of one of the sprockets.

So after doing more painting with Iscor Black, and welding on a spreader for the sprocket-side of the frame, we're almost ready to install it!

This had to be raised away from the frame a bit to allow the chain, nuts and the ends of the bolts to pass through. I measured up the protruding shaft for a hand-wheel, then thought I'd just look in the scrapyard, and came away with a flywheel from an old part-wooden baler-press which I've seen falling apart for the last 20 years. The flywheel had been modified for another job at some time and had been returned to the scrapyard, so this will be its third job in life! It will need a shaft removed and an adaptor bush made.

In the latter part of the afternoon I milled 12 kg of meal plus the bran, almost a further 1 kg. This is for an order for the food for the Open Gardens weekends in the beginning of November, the bran for truffles, evidently (?). Both sets of visitors staying at the self-catering cottages seemed to enjoy the demonstration!

A couple of weeks ago, we appeared in the Star newspaper in Johannesburg, in the Travel Section. John Menasce sent the cutting down, and Jayne had it blown up and laminated. No such thing as Bad Publicity!

Regards
Andy