mills-mag - 2/8/08 Period water, wind and animal powered mills. NOTE: See also the files: commerce-msg, buildings-msg, medieval-tech-msg, flour-msg, wood-msg, tools-msg, charcoal-msg, bellows-msg. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday. This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter. The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors. Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s). Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous Stefan at florilegium.org ************************************************************************ Date: Mon, 05 Jul 1999 10:59:46 -0400 From: rmhowe <magnusm at ncsu.edu> To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu Subject: Re: Water Mills The Norse had a sort of side shot mill that they used. Think of a top with vanes and the water shooting in diagonally downward with the stone on top. In France there is a hill that has two lines of the remains of numerous watermills the Romans used for grinding grain. The hill was steep enough that the used water for one powered the mills beneath. A fantastic engineering feat. I think this particular one may have been written up in Scientific American sometime between ten and thirty years ago. Magnus Date: Tue, 06 Jul 1999 09:30:43 -0700 From: Tim Bray/Catherine Keegan <keegan at ix.netcom.com> To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu Subject: Re: Water Mills >The Norse had a sort of side shot mill that they used. >Think of a top with vanes and the water shooting in diagonally >downward with the stone on top. > >In France there is a hill that has two lines of the remains of >numerous watermills the Romans used for grinding grain. The >hill was steep enough that the used water for one powered the >mills beneath. A fantastic engineering feat. I think this >particular one may have been written up in Scientific American >sometime between ten and thirty years ago. > >Magnus The Norse mill you mentioned is called a "clack" mill; there is a reconstruction at the Craggaunowen Project in Ireland. I believe the "clack" mill is more effective where the water flow is higher velocity but lower quantity. Other types of water-mills include the overshot wheel (water pours from the mill-race onto the top of the wheel), which is probably the one most people are familiar with; the undershot wheel (bottom of the wheel projects into the mill-race or a river), very common on bridges in the MA; and the turbine-wheel, which I think is actually OOP. Each type has specific advantages for certain situations and uses the energy of moving water in slightly different ways. Of course, there are also various types of windmills; the post-mill was very common in the MA but almost none have survived. They were built in flatter country where water power was not feasible, e.g. East Anglia, Flanders, the Low Countries. Then there were the animal-powered mills, usually horses (although in Belgium we saw several dog-powered butter churns - ! - from the 19th c.). Colin Date: Tue, 6 Jul 1999 11:12:41 -0700 (PDT) From: H B <nn3_shay at yahoo.com> To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu Subject: Re: Water Mills --- Tim Bray/Catherine Keegan <keegan at ix.netcom.com> wrote: > The Norse mill you mentioned is called a "clack" mill; there is a > reconstruction at the Craggaunowen Project in Ireland. I believe the > "clack" mill is more effective where the water flow is higher velocity but > lower quantity. Other types of water-mills include the overshot wheel > (water pours from the mill-race onto the top of the wheel), which is > probably the one most people are familiar with; the undershot wheel (bottom > of the wheel projects into the mill-race or a river), very common on > bridges in the MA; and the turbine-wheel, which I think is actually OOP. > > Each type has specific advantages for certain situations and uses the > energy of moving water in slightly different ways. > > Colin David Macaulay (the guy who wrote _Castle_ and _Cathedral_, among others) wrote a book titled _Mill_, which I think does a very good job explaining the basic concepts involved in most of these types (though set in the 19th c., the hydraulic concepts are the same as they've always been). I always enjoy his books, and as a basic starting point to understand various building concepts, his books with their very helpful pictures are hard to beat. I think the children's and young adults sections in the library are often a great place to start researching something unfamiliar, as things aimed at 10-14 yr olds tend to explain all the terminology and assume no particular background. I still miss the Junior Britannica that my mother got rid of -- it was much easier to find a little bit about something that just caught my curiosity than the big Britannica, which required more than a quick glance. -- Harriet, who grew up in a house with three (3!) levels of encyclopedias and had no clue how LUCKY I was till many years later. Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 07:50:47 -0500 From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net> Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Is anyone familiar with this source? To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org> > When I was researching cereal grain for my research paper I came > across this reference. Is it too early? > > Moritz, L.A., Grain-Mills and Flour in Classical Antiquity > (Oxford, 1958) > > Aldyth This is a classic text on the evolution of milling technology. You should find the information on rotary mills of particular interest as this was the standard milling technology from Late Antiquity until the development of roller mills in the 19th Century. For those interested, Ox-Bow Books has an edition for around $20. You might also want to check out Watts, Martin, The Archeology of Mills and Milling, also available from Ox-Bow. Bear <the end> Edited by Mark S. Harris mills-msg Page 3 of 3