Building the Waterwheel

Building the water wheel started in the late Summer 2025. One set of shrouds were laid out on the floor inside the mill and the oak arms were carefully shaped and cut to length. The arms were then installed onto the hub on the wheel axle. Finally the shrouds were installed one at a time, keeping the wheel balanced in the process. The inboard shrouds, which were the newly cast ones, were installed first. The process was repeated for the second set of shrouds. Tie bars were then added between the two sets of shrouds. These tie bars will clamp the buckets into the shrouds.

Building the wooden buckets on the wheel was done in two stages. first the sole boards were slotted into place around the centre of the wheel. These are made from oak tongue and groove boards. The tie bars had to be loosened and the shrouds locally sprung apart to allow the boards to be slotted in and then tightened again to hold them in place.

The buckets were then built, each made of two oak boards fitted together with seals to try to avoid leaks. The same procedure with loosening the tie bars and springing the shrouds apart was used to insert the buckets into the grooves on the shrouds.