Sack hoist and kiln work

Our attempts to reurrect some kind of sack hoist continue.  It looks as though we need to spool the rope round the shaft rather than the pulley of the layshaft to get a controllable speed.  The pulley is 0.7m diameter, so would lift about 2m per revolution.  As it is geared up 80/11 from the pit wheel, by my calculations at 10 wheel revs per minute it would lift at about 8 feet per second.  Anyway, we have started moving the sheaves to where they will need to be and planning where the rope will run.

We also started to lay out the position of the walls of the kiln using the plans drawn up by the people who restored the mill around 1990.  There seem to be one or two inconsistencies in the dimensions, but we concluded that the front wall, which housed the firebox, would have been where the plank is on this photo - blocking a good part of the existing passageway.