Brad I saw a mill up in Nebraska restored to working order. That has been 25 -30yrs ago. The power came in from the wheel and could be transferred throughout the entire two story building, with a series of belts and levers to transfer the power for a given use. On the first floor it had a grain operation, a huge stone wheel ground the corn for corn meal and a smaller stone wheel was used for grinding wheat and oats for flour and other uses. There was some other things down there on the first floor but can't remember what they were anymore!
The second story had a lumber mill operation, it had a huge saw, a planer, and a lathe, as well as some work stations. The logs were floated down river and they had a system the looked like a big freight elevator, that could lift several logs at one time to the second story and one on to a conveyer belt that carried them into the saw! Then they were hand carried to the other operations on the 2nd story. Another freight elevator at the other end would lower the finished lumber to be loaded onto wagons.
The guy gave us a tour and we watched the grinding of the corn meal. My father asked him why the lumber operation was on the second story and here was the guys answer. It makes sense when you think about it. The two stones used for grinding the cornmeal and the flour weighed several tons and the saw that was used in the original lumber operation was like a two man saw. There is a name for it but at the moment it escapes me. Any way the huge saw had to have a connection that extended thru the 2nd story floor to allow for the stoke of the huge piston apparatus that went up and down to make the stroke of the saw. It had been converted to a bandsaw at a later date before they had logged out a lot of the trees in the area and the mill had been shut down.
I asked him if the lumber operation was up and running. He told us not at that time that one of the big bearings that the huge transfer shaft used had galled and they were in the process of having someone pour a new one. He says they ain't made parts for any of this in a long time and anything that breaks down has to be fixed and all parts have to be handmade! He did tell us though he had run close to 5000 board feet of lumber for a customer that wanted that rough sawn look last year before the bearing had gone out.
He said everyone thought I was crazy when I bought this old place and told them I was going to bring it back to life. He said when I walked thru the building it had been closed up for many years but everything was there just like the day they quit they walked out a locked the doors. He spent the first year and half on clean-up of the water channel, sluice gate to the water wheel and he had to re-build the entire water wheel bearing and all. He also had to do replace/relocate one of the huge stones for the corn meal grinding. Someone had tried to steal it at some point in time and had moved it off of the center axis somehow and then just gave up evidently because of the weight. He had to get a crane in there to sit on the hill above the mill and boom down to the wheel to pick it up and re-set it. the roof and some of the 2nd story floor had to be replaced anyway from water damage and it worked out most of the damage was over the grist stone. So they pulled the roof back and opened up the floor and the crane operator worked blind by radio to do the drop in thru the roof and lift the stone and re-sit it. They had pictures and that alone was one heck of a feat in itself!!
He had spent months before that building a new axis before they got the crane there. He said I was nervous because I didn't know it we could get the old axis out and was the new one going to work or not I didn't know for sure. For what that crane was costing me an hour this was a one time shot. But him and several of his friends let the crane lift the top stone, then they pulled the old axis and installed his replacement and resit the top stone. He also had locate a conveyer belt company to make him some belts to replace a couple of the belts. They had been exposed to the elements when part of the roof went bad over the years.
We spent 2-3 hours there that day talking to the owner and looking around. It was one of the neatest things I had ever seen, just fascinating to me, not sure my wife liked it as much but she new I did and didn't let on at all!!
