While this is true, the work going into handmills or beast-driven mills is non-trivial as well. Construction can take place after the harvest, or during summer. You need a millstone (for any kind of grinding) - I guess there is some Ernalda magic to work stone. You need carpentry - standard work for the building, slightly less for the movable parts. Large hinges - well, these people know gates. Rotating axles - hey, they use carts and chariots. Gears - not that usual. Vertical looms are the closest equivalent for similar constructions, so this would require some expert knowledge. Orstan the Carpenter is mentioned to have it, his mill is found in the Storm Village inside Aedin's Wall.
> It either takes inherited knowledge, magically gained knowledge,
> or a gifted tinkerer who can work out the details through trial
> and error.
If Orstan can build one, then one of his better initiates should be able to do so, too.
> Further, the resouces to build it are non-trivial.
I.e. they cry for a communal effort - like having an entire hamlet cooperating ad collecting.
> It takes big grind stones,
Limestone will wear down earlier, but also harder material can be found in the Quivins.
> large beams,
Orstan the Carpenter at work again...
> long and wide swathes of tightly woven cloth,
similar to the ornate wall hangings woven by the women anyway. And, what are kites made of?
> etc. All these things can be obtained by heortlings--and
> certainly magic can probably both make them easier to get and
> make them better than their real world counterparts. However
> I would suggest that this is still a substantial investment
> for a clan.
And what a good status symbol to boast about!
> Most clans don't have the resources
I doubt that. The lumber won't be much of a difficulty, the rock can be traded for, the experts require some gifts. Nothing to lead you into starvation.
> and curiousity to put these sort of resources in the hands
> of someone who wants to build something new and hasn't
> worked out the fine details yet, although no doubt there
> could be clans so blessed.
Go visit Storm Village, then. This will take up resources, but it's religion. Ask Orstan.
> I'm willing to believe in either hereditary knowledge or magically
> gained knowledge, which is why I've suggested elsewhere that
> different clans or tribes may have different styles of windmills.
> All the same, I think that a windmill only makes sense for a clan
> that gets a very high return on its labour. i.e. the people who
> could be hand-grinding grain have something else useful to do,
> and it is so useful that it will re-pay the cost of building
> and maintaining the mill (and transporting all the grain to and
> from a central location).
You mean those people whose craft has erected most of that mill? Sure, they have better things to do.
> This could be the case in certain clans that specialize
> in valuable resources, like crafts or magic.
No specialisation is required to make this an economic success.
> It could also be the case in a clan that is chronically short
> of people to do basic activities (i.e. a small clan that needs
> every hand tending crops and cattle if they to pay the lunar
> taxes every year), however short of heavy use of magic I'd
> expect that such a clan would have a hard time
> building a mill in the first place.
This time would be their otherwise unproductive time, so where's the trouble?
BTW, what kind of millstones do the Heortlings use? Flat ones like medieval European, or doubly conical ones like the Pompeian mill?
> Two more notes:
> - A toy windmill was built (or at least designed) by the brilliant
> Alexandrian inventor Heron long before the working mill was built in
> Persia.
Around 200 AD, IIRC. He used it to power a musical instrument.
> It is very possible that the early persian mills were
> inspired by Heron's design, although we'll never know (this is
> per "Ancient Inventions" a wonderful book).
Ancients' technology (alas only in German) details much about milling etc. as well, and I used that for my yesterday bus-ride read.
A horizontal mill would probably look like a motion rune...
> - water mills were in use in many, many, places long before
> windmills were.
Mostly in places where irrigation farming was common.
> Anywere that there are many streams with a good current
> watermills are probably generally more practical (i.e. easier to
> build and more reliably powered) than windmills.
Water mills require some irrigation knowledge. The Heortlings rarely have to worry about that, although they probably have done this at some point in their history as well.
> Most of Sartar seems blessed with hilly ground and adequate
> precipitation, so water mills would generally make more sense
> there.
As long as you can dig the canals and don't have to cut them through bedrock, maybe.
> Now, theologically
> windmills are more appropriate, but I'd still imagine watermills
> being more common for practical purposes.
IMO a watermill will take up more resources than a windmill - without an irrigation system to feed the mill, you don't have any reliability advantage, and upkeep of canals and ponds is considerable.
> I'd generally imagine
> those that needed the labour savings to build water mills, and those
> that wanted the magic and prestige to build a windmill.
IMO the labour savings are as good for windmills as for watermills. The real alternative would be an ox-driven mill (where the oxen could do the threshing of the grain in the same moment simply by walking over it, around and around). What do these plow-team oxen do the rest of the year, anyway?
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