Re: Heortling Mills

From: bethexton_at_...
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 20:12:05 -0000

Thank you! That was something I'd forgotten to mention when I was describing why I favored the horizontal mill over the post style!
>
>
> > - 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.
> <snip>
> Water mills require some irrigation knowledge.
<snip>
> As long as you can dig the canals and don't have to cut them
through
> bedrock, maybe.
>

These statement I don't understand. All you need for a watermill is a good steady flow of water with a good current. In some places the steady flow and the current have been obtained with damns and fancy sluices and yes even canals, but with good natural conditions you need none of these. Believe me, I live in a fairly hilly part of the world, and I've seen the remains of a number of mills that the early settlers here used. While they had access to more advanced technology than the heortling do, most of the mills were very basic as far as the water works went. Certainly the less you mess with the stream, the easier it would be to make a deal with the streams spirit or daemon, I imagine.

Actually, what you really need is some combination of volume of flow and speed of flow. It is easier to work with a small, fast, stream, but the pumps that drove water up from the River Seine to an aqueduct that supplied the pond that supplied the fountains at Versailles was all powered by large water wheels just driven by the fairly slow current of the Seine (The whole water wheels/pump thingie was called "La Machine de Marly" if memory serves correctly. Quite a fascinating piece of engineering, but also the source of my contention that mills aren't so easy to keep running smoothly).

Oh, and with some clever woodwork you could also easily shape a motion rune into a water wheel!

{Side question: do heortlings use spoked wheels? I'd assume yes. If so, I'd think a master wheelwright could probably manage eithe curved spokes or else that motion runes would be mounted on many wheels as an ornament.}

Regards;

Bryan

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