Your mills origin, the beginnings

[DanG]

  As the saying goes, you can make something fool proof, but you can't make it da*n fool proof, and there's always a lot of da*n fools out there working harder then you.

Lj

Or as Mark Twain said, "Nothing is foolproof for a sufficiently talented fool." 

[Coalsmoke]

D Hagens, what are your plans for the mill? Depending on this answer, you may find your selection narrowed down some. One builder I would stay away form is the one local to you and I, I have had a bad experience with them and it cost them my purchase.

I don't know about my mill's origins (other than what is on the Norwood website), but one thing I like about it is that most of the wearable parts like belts and bearings are available locally.

[Meadows Miller]

d hagens,
those m- 14 mills were not usually hyd driven. the original was a hand push feed. the one i had was power feed . 1 lever withv belts and pulleys  and a gear reduction for the cut. it went forward 1'' for every rev of the blade and went back 3 times faster than forward. pc

 So Paul case, in a way that I can understand the gear reduction thing worked like a manure spreader? Like it goes click, click then grabs and works like that?
 When it moves is it a slow move forward or is it a sudden jerk? If so does it slow things down?

DH with the feedworks the m14s had a simple v belt drive with no gear reduction the reduction was done through the size of the feedworks pulleys that the belts run on as the backing belt runs strait of the mandrel onto the feedworks cable drum  with  gear reduction was 1to1 usually two cast cogs about 6"to10"dia and  on larger mills like the Meadows,Frick and American and the like  and was used to change the direction the shaft sins in so when you pull the handel it feeds and when you push it returns thats why you see some of the older mills it works the other way around as they run a strait settup w/o the gears Mate 

Regards Chris

[D Hagens]

Had to read that twice Chris But with the explanation and looking at a few pics I understand it now.

 Here I sit reading about the old mills and I just remembered that in Ft. Langley they have a farm museum that has an old steam powered mill set up that they run every summer.

 The funny thing is that I lived in a heritage house for a year that was right across the street from the museum.