Little Old Mills, by Marion Nicholl Rawson, 1935.
Where there's a will there's a way. Old Saw
Mother Necessity A man with a house to move, or misplaced calf to be hauled out of a well, or a great mill wheel to be turned, was pretty apt to look about him for some sort of assistance, some stronger arm than this own to drag the one, or some sort of a "jigger" to raise the other. This looking around for help seems to have begun as soon as men were men, and while their earliest efforts were rather sad makeshift, from our point of view, they were yet successful enough to make humankind a continuing process of achievement. Early man know his trees, his fire and water, and his stones, and that a push down on one end of a balanced log would send the other end up. He knew too that a stone dropped on a softer substance would treat it badly, and that a thong thrown over a high branch would lift a deer to one's shoulder when his own arms could not accomplish it. In time, our many-times-removed grandfathers came to realize that each trick which they restored to, to make their work easier, was but some variation on a few basic trick, and came later to call them the "six mechanical powers." Under one tabulation we see them as the following, called "Fist Power Helps:" "the lever, the inclined plane, the roller, the windlass, treadmill and turn post, and the transfer of the motion of a wheel to a shaft by means of a rope or belt, crank or treadle." Another classification is perhaps neater and more businesslike, but not so clear to the lay mind, and comes under the heading "Any Device for doing Work is a Machine." This list here reads: Lever, wheel and axle, pulley, inclined plane, screw, wedge. Then we have the further word that "all simple machines are based either on the lever or the inclined plane, the moving body having a rotary motion with the former, and a straight line motion with the latter, and that from these two powers are derived the pulley, wheel and axle, wedge and screw." Again we find that "The wedge and screw are but modified forms of the inclined plane, which is nothing more than the simple device appearing on the sides of a wedge, and in the screw when it wraps itself about a central axis and makes the ascending treads. Glorified by such titles as "engine," "agent," and "machine," these still simple ways of getting the day's work done were combined, recombined, adjusted and fitted to suit the needs of men who were doing the earth's work. It was the simple tools and frames and jacks and benches, which kept turning up today at country auctions and which are at last being appreciated and cherished by the knowing, which our forefathers made and used, and which our skyscrapers, throw our great bridges across rivers and turn the myriad wheels of our great factories. Force, muscular exertion, or whatever else is capable of producing the same effect, has always had a universal appeal, and yet in old days as today, it was not the lazy man who sought and found it and applied it to ease his daily work, but the vigorous one. Although the machine or engine was simply a mediary by which the energy was indirectly transferred from the animate to the inanimate, it took determination, planning and real aliveness to construct and manage it, and this was the work of the energetic man of the community rather than the fellow who tilted his chair back against the wall after the miller had brought the mill and his millering trade into existence. Knowing that all of these simple man-helps were based upon one of the six actual forces or some combination of them, it becomes a game to see how they were applied in the mill and the home, and how often we have within our own collection of ancient treasures some article which perfectly illustrates them. Since the lever and the inclined plane were the bases of all the forces, we necessarily see them appearing as some part of the other four under other names, and here the games becomes exciting, especially when instead of one wheel we find a "train" of wheels, as well as " compound levers" and their associated "Advantages." The Lever Suppose when a miller chose the likeliest place for his mill he found also a great rock which defied his man power and yet stood squarely in front of where the door should be. With a heave-o, his crowbar, or lever would wrench the obstacle from its resting place through the centuries and send it rolling into the creek. Here was the weight, power and fulcrum showing off. A lever is generally rigid, usually bar shaped, and turning upon a fixed pivot or point, and it is of various sorts, to be useful when the load is heaver than the power and vice versa. One of the white man's improvements in shipping, over the ways of the Indian, was the addition of a row lock to his skiff, thereby turning his oar into a lever instead of using it as a paddle. The old-fashioned steelyard, the weighting machine of every mill and many homes, with its beam, scale and weight, had power, load and fulcrum on one line, so to speak. The well sweep is a perfect example of the lever's usefulness, while the great timbers fastened above the cotton-press gave us the lever combined with the screw. In the primitive cheese-press we have the lever with the pulley, working through the windlass (derivation, "to wind" and "axis") where ropes, running through pulleys and a central crossbar, raise a plank on which the cheese is placed, until it reaches an upper plank where the pressure causes the whey to run out of the cheese hoop into a grooved runway, and all this because a short stick is stuck into one hole after another as the windlass is turned about. The Wheel and Axle There is something about the very form and construction of a wheel which gives assurance of power, continuity, radiating usefulness. A circle stands for eternity and all of these things which endure, and has its place in art, symbolism, mythology and in the everyday life of plain folks, both for its beauty and its usefulness. The place for a wheel was not only under a cart, it had power within its hubs, spokes and circumference, ringing a bell, turning a lathe, and doing scores of other things for the miller and all workmen. A lever cannot be used to raise weights far, but an easy modification, securing continuous action, is to make the fulcrum into a pivot, and to apply the power and the weight at the circumference of circles or wheels with a common center. Thus do we get the wheel and axle, and the capstan. The wheel and axle consists of two cylinders of different diameters rigidly connected so that they turn together about a common axis, and their power works downward or upward according to need and arrangement. It is not necessary that the entire wheel be used, for an arm or a spoke of a wheel, or anything that the power causes to revolve in a circle, is considered a wheel in this type of power. For instance, in the old well which stands in the yard, where a hemlock roller is turned by a crank, and gathers the rope about itself in regular folds until the bucket has been drawn to the open air, there is no wheel in sight but the distance between the center line of the crank handle and the axis of the drum corresponds to the radius or spoke of a wheel. Wheels may turn either vertically or horizontally, like the spinning wheel and the potter's wheel, respectively. The best example of the wheel and axle in its undiluted simplicity is the old open well where under a sturdy shelter a great wooden wheel or drum is fastened at either side of a frame, to revolve in a socket and raise and lower the bucket without tiring the housewife's back. Some of the most interesting examples of this type of wheel are still found in Connecticut, where they are preserved not only as heirlooms but are still actually in daily use, with their balance rocks, their connecting joints and their ropes, chains or leather bands. One at Thompson can surely have no rival for beauty of location or ingenuity of equipment. As we have found, this form of power consists of two cylinders of different diameters rigidly connected and turning on the same axis. So here in this well we have the large wooden drum over which a great length of rope runs to lower the bucket to below the level of the water. Upon the same axis is the smaller cylinder over which a broad strap of cowhide, strongly riveted together, winds in the opposite direction, and of a length only great enough to raise the monstrous rock as far as is necessary to let the bucket on the rope reach the water and fill, when it drops back down its short path to reach the earth again, and all with the easy control of the human hand which could not even stir the rock unaided. It is a seesaw, for when the stones goes up, the bucket goes down. The covering for a well of this sort is not alone over the well opening but over the rock and the space where it rests upon the ground. This Thompson well with its stone wall and barways shouldering up to it on either side and the trees above sheltering it from the heat of the sun, is a perfect example of the wheel and axle, and of how beauty may grow from necessarily. In place of hand power, foot power could be substituted. The women of the Southern mountains had, and have, their own "mills" within their single room cabins, some of them making stools and chairs and other articles which could be turned on the lathe run by a treadle on the floor. The tread-mill on large farms where a span of horses or a bull were driven upon a slanting platform, which revolved beneath their tread and would never let them stop, had, as we shall see under gristmills, its wheel and axle connecting with a rope belt which turned a threshing mill, thus releasing the farmer from his old-time use of the flail. The polite farmer spoke not of the bull's running the treadmill but of "the power in the barn." The first treadmills of antiquity had no noble purpose in their turning, but were wide steps inside of a huge wheel where persons condemned to punishment were bound and forced to keep climbing these endless stairs to their ultimate death. This turning of one wheel with other wheels by means of a belt or rope or cogs, gave an increase of power over the one wheel. The simple "wool wheel" for spinning - one of woman's "en-gine's" - was made of one large wheel turned by hand, with a slender woven linen band passing above it and connecting it with a small wheel in the head of the spinning wheel. This small wheel turned the wool-carrying spindle not with the speed of its own periphery but with that of the larger wheel which was greater in proportion as it size was greater than its smaller side-partner. The old-fashioned apple-parer is a familiar wheel-and-axle en-gine worked with a hand crank. Very early, men began to take out their jack-knives and whittle cogs in the curved edges of their wooden wheels - such as are found in old clocks - since they found that a band would stretch and "creep," and the power be thereby lessened. The toothed wheel or "gears," may be considered as a lever of the first class with the addition that it can be rotated continuously instead of rocking back and forth through a short distance. The capstan, more familiarly known as the turn-post, is of the same family, and was immensely handy when logs had to be moved at a one-man or a rock dragged out of a mill-tail. The capstan was worked with a lever for slow motion, giving this a jerk, putting the stick into the next hole, and so on. It was also rigged up with radiating spokes, or turned by animal power, the animal trudging round and round the post winding the rope upon the capstan. With such power a good-sized house could be marched along a country road for a long distance, successfully blocking all traffic for a day or so - in those times of little hurry. Had it not been for the wheel and axle there would have been o "power mills," this term being applied to mills as soon as water or wind had been chained to them, for it was the great shaft and the turning wheel in the brook or tidal stream, or the wind against the turning sail wheel, which connected ford with the work to be done. A pair of rollers, simply manageable logs which could be placed beneath a heavy large object and assist it along the road by placing and replacing, was a second cousin to the wheel and axle, and a close chum of the roller was the greased wooden runner. Of the immediate family were the grindstone, trundle-bed casters whittled into place, the "hel-m" of the boat and all the large branch of revolving barrel shapes which churned milk into butter, carded cotton, threshed grain, polished swifty turning objects, and did a thousand other things as well. The Pulley "Yes, rocks is funny things. They're always comin' or goin' or stayin' where you don't want them. When they be on a wall the frost can't rest easy 'til it's begun to suck the bed rocks in. If a rock's safe underground, next spring's frost will heave it up right in the middle of your smooth mowin' or your wagon road. When I was a boy they was still usin' the old tripod to lift rocks. If you had a big old feller what was too big to be easy drug off, we'd bury it right where it stood. Them old tripods was made of stout green wood. We'd set one tent like over a rock and rig it up with a wheel and tackle. When the rock was hangin' good, we'd dig out under it and make a hole deep enough to hold it, and then we'd drop the old feller plumb down into it and bury it up." Thus de we see the third mechanical power, or the pulley, or some modified form of it. A mill needed many rocks beneath it, and many rocks besides the wheel-pit and some beside the sluice way, and sometimes more where the shaft was to be supported. A pulley is a simple machine by which a weight may apparently be supported by means of a force only half as great as itself, with the catchy answer that it is the hook which holds the pulley to the beam or ceiling which carries half of the load. A pulley is really a small wheel running on an axle, with a groove for a cord or rope. Such a simple friction reducer remains in old Fort San Marco - started in 1638 at St. Augustine, Florida, finished in 1754 as Fort Marion - a pair of which were placed at the upper corners of the portcullis door where entrance was made across the broad moat surrounding the great edifice. When the enemy was seen approaching, the massive framework of timbers which formed a bridge across the water, was raised before the door, cutting off all entrance, and this raising was done by means of chains or ropes running over the ancient pulleys which still show between the great timbers which hold them. A lever, or even a wheel-and-axle arrangement, would have been too slow for this task of defense. When movable pulleys were connected with a tackle of rope or rigging or lashing, we have the "block and tackle," and these blocks were made of layers of lignum vitae, and extremely strong wood, now largely unavailable, and called "linkum vitae" by old seaman who know it well. These was the small tackle or "jigger." Whether on land or sea the pulleys had the same power, but it is easier to learn of them from the sailors who know them intimately at all times of day or night. They talk lightly of a "jig" on a sailing vessel when the sail is set and they need to take it up more, and of the "luff tackle" or "tay-cle" - if the boat is fresh from the southern waters - where two sets of pulleys are joined together by their ropes to give double power to the "histing." The large blocks measuring a foot or two across and through, are made "twofold" or "threefold" or "three sheaf," or more if necessary, and are made of layers of lignum vitae with the rollers or shives - the "sheeves" - revolving upon their own axles within them. On shore, too, pulleys were joined into trains of wheels, which multiplied power. Pulleys and belts are really nothing but gears without teeth and instead of running together, running each other by means of cords, ropes or belting of some kind, which the pulley could be combined with some other power such as the capstan, to combine the "advantage" of both. The Inclined Plane In the earlier days of "horizon" was much overworked. Today the vertical plane is expressed in various ways, but then things were always "parallel to the horizon" or not so, the horizon being accepted as the standard sign of the plane. The simple inclined plane was to become in time one of the six primal mechanical powers, and was described as a "slope or flat surface making an angle with another flat surface usually horizontal," or, "in line with the horizon." The incline plane's power lay in the fact that it supported a weight by force less than itself, by the pressure of the plane upon it. If at the top of the mill foundation there were still more rocks to be placed, by rigging up a slanting timber with a pulley at the upper end and any sufficient power to move the weight, the stone could be moved up the greased surface with comparative ease as compared with the labor of "histing" it by arm muscle alone. The Screw Perhaps the incline plane's greatest, or at least most unusual usefulness, was when it was transformed into the screw. The screw is the inclined plane wound about a central axis. The screw as we see it in common use is a slender cylinder with a spiral groove winding about its circumference, the ridges left between these grooves making the threads. When the screw became a mechanical power it did so by having a lever attached which gave it a rotation power, so that each time that a revolution took place the weight was raised a distance equal to that between the spires of the screw threads. The screw was also cut upon an axis, by having the central part of the shaft grooved into treads. With a crank handle attached, this was made to revolved above a cogged wheel, sending it forward one tooth for every revolution. Thus we have the wheel-and-axle working with the screw. The screw soon became the chief pressing agent for paper mills, cotton mills, book binderies, and it was pressed into service in the turn buckle with drew two ends together by turning in opposite directions at the same time. When a cartwheel fell off, or the axle needed greasing, the clumsy "jack" or "jack-screw" was brought into play, and when a building was being moved, the jacks were first applied to raise the frame so that the timbers upon which it would ride might be shoved under, preparatory to the final move. The house was "jacked-up" with a screw. The Wedge Again in the wedge we find the inclined plane, the former being called simply "the movable inclined plane." As we know, the wedge is always sharpened to a thin edge at one end, and it one would get the essence of wedge value one must go to the lumberman, and the splitter of wood for a yawning, hungry fireplace during a cold winter. Here the indispensable wedge has a busy life. "The tree will fall the way the chips fly," and it is often helped in this natural inclination by the insertion of a simple wooden wedge. When a man is splitting up great chunks of firewood and finds himself up against a hard knot, he reaches for his wedge, but now it must be of iron to withstand the blows of his axe. A wedge is an unostentatious little worker which manages to slip in where nothing else can go, and therefore becomes mighty in hits own right. The "gump wedge," that device of the modern shiftless worker who has cut his plank too short and must fill out the space in some way if the house is to stand, may have been also a device of the forefathers, but it so, it is seldom found. The Bow That ancient power, the twirling bow, belongs with the wheel and axle in its essence, but seems very much a thing apart as we see it in use in the far-away days. Centuries before our mills had been thought of, the bow drill for making fire or boring holes had been used. From the Eskimos to the South American Indians the bow was an old tool, often nothing but a stick perhaps a foot and a half long, leaned on by the workman's breast as it stood upon the ground until it bowed out, when the man grasped it and worked it as he would a carpenter's bit. Apparently the better and more effective way was to wind a string somewhere about the middle of a stick and rotate it by pulling a bow, to which the ends of the string were fastened, quickly back and forth. The very first attempt to use a stick in this upright fashion was to rub it violently between the hands, then the teeth or breast were used to steady the stick for turning with a string, and in time the idea arrived with fastened the upper part of the stick in a slot or hole where it could be held firmly and yet still revolve at the pull of the string or cord. Sometimes the stick was bend beneath a board upon which the man leaned his weight, and this kept the stick revolving. The Onandago Indians has the pump drill, where the string was fastened in such a way that when the board was pressed down the drill twirled rapidly first one way and then another. The bow seemed to take on real dignity when it was rigged up to run a lathe in a turning mill, or a drill in a blacksmith shop, or separate the fibers of wool or fur in a hatter's shop. In some of these places the bow became a springboard or pole fastened horizontally above the worker's head with a cord fastened to its free end, and then wrapped around the work and the lower end attached to a treadle for foot power. The bow was the usual power in the old turning mills, the cord dropping directly from it and winding about the stick or timber to be turned. Sometimes a cranked wheel kept the work going, or perhaps an assistant who pulled lustily upon the end of the cord. There were many and very clever ways of getting power, long before the "power mills," run by water and wind and later steam, were ever thought of, and the sweep, the turn post, and the bow were among the quaintest and most effective. One power there was which is never mentioned with the proper respect, among the "powers," and that was the old cleft leather apron which bore tons of rocks from center-fold to off-side to make a clearing and wall it in.
Return to Home Page mailto:trhazen@hotmail.com
