Milling again

Two of the curved wedges
for the axletree bearing...

... and one of them in situ

The loose bearing at the indoor end of the axletree has now been fixed. Richard has made some curved wedges from a length of 4 inch pipe. They have nuts welded on so that they can (perhaps) be jacked out of the timber by a screw if necessary.

 Meanwhile, Ray was putting the finishing touches to the grain storage bin. It has three separate lids, each of which is just lifted off the box (no hinges!)  There is also a ventilator, with internal insect screen; another one is to be added when we have obtained another ventilator grille.

George was usefully employed applying some lime mortar to the joint pointing in the launder support piers.  This morning, Bob went to Little Salkeld watermill and obtained 100kg of wheat and a few hundred flour bags - thanks again, Nick.

In the afternoon we started the mill and eventually got the water flow, grain feed and stone separation set correctly so that we were producing decent flour. There are still some whole grains bouncing off the damsel and missing the milling process, but we made a sieve of suitable grade to remove them from the meal. At the quantities we are producing it isn't a problem to sieve all the product.

We then made up the meal into 500g sample bags, about 16 in all by the end of the day.

Richard tests the
product

Our very first bagged flour!