Johan Coertze’s idea last week to rock the delivery chute to the Vitruvian Mill longways like the sieves in a threshing machine made the best sense. I have since heard from Ray Killian that many of the chutes in the wonderful roller mill in Springbok are suspended in ‘slings’. My first idea was to have some kind of face cam on the end of the shaft which protrudes from the grain cleaner, then I realised that the grain cleaner also rocks like that, why not pick up the motion from that, through a 90 degree bell-crank? 

For the suspension of the chute, eight hinges from my supply of old fittings will work well.

The good news is that the chute is moving back and forth and grain flows! It remains to be seen how wet the grain can be at the present inclination and whether the angle must be tilted further. But I’m getting ahead of myself! 

In the last report, I was still looking for some Oregon planking to cover the metal of the chute with. On the same day I bought some fascia which would have worked, but was too thick and I don’t have a thicknesser; however on a call-out to a broken tractor, I found myself standing next to two planks, just what I needed, about to be used for concrete shuttering! They were quickly loaded and it didn’t take long to cover the metal trough and glue and tack the whole lot together. The upper end also got an end-stop.

Having done some marking on the wooden plug for the chute to the Stamford last week, I did some sawing at home. At the Mill, I removed some big-headed tacks from the metal plates lining the chute and sanded the plug all over to fit nicely into the trough and tried it out.

 Since October 2006, Andy Selfe has devoted most of his spare time to the restoration to full working order of the Water Mill at Compagnes Drift Farm, Bot River, Western Cape. Although the Mill had been preserved carefully by the Beaumont family since they took over the farm, it required the restoration of the water wheel, the 'launder' and the tail race to get the water wheel turning again after probably 50 years of standing idle. Once that was done, the original 200-year-old 'Vitruvian' or built-in Mill needed to be rebuilt, as all the woodwork, or 'furniture' was missing.

Sandstone Heritage Trust - News

January/February 2006

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