greatnorthwoods.org - Whitefield NH Mill Restoration Fall of 1998

|Home |Contents |Maps |Panoramas |Towns |Dining |Lodging |Campgrounds |Activities |Calendar |Chambers of Commerce |Moose |Property |Services |Shopping |

If you arrived here stuck in someone else's frames...use this link to break free!

Whitefield Mill Restoration in the summer of 1998

The Robinson Mill in Calais, Vermont - The oldest water powered sawmill in Vermont.

This kind of project is a little hard to predict. You have to play it by ear as materials and equipment become available. You can't just go to the local supply company and buy antique mill equipment. Sometimes the parts you need appear without warning, such as the turbines and governor you'll see below.

Repairing the roof of the Astle building, next to the mill.

Alexis Moser, a businessman from Lancaster owns an old mill building that housed the turbine pictured below. He was kind enough to donate it for possible use in the Whitefield mill.

The main shaft at the top of the turbine housing.

Part of the mechanism for the control of water into the turbine.

There are gates around the outside of the turbine housing to control water flow.

The turbine lurks inside the lower housing.

This is where the water enters the turbine.

The following pictures are of a Lombard Governor that is used to regulate the flow of water into the turbine to keep the output shaft rotating at the same speed regardless of the load put on it by equipment in use.

Equipment from the 1800s is really a work of art. The engineers ang mold makers who designed and created machinery tried to make it beautiful as well as functional.

This is the sensor for the governor, a four flyball arrangement on vertical springs. As the spped increases the balls are thrown out by centrifugal force. This pulls up a slip ring on the shaft just below out of site which actuates the turbine speed control.