Planing mill

“ It is in a coal and lumbering region, and makes extensive coal-shipments. Its important manufacturing establishments are sash, door and nail factories, coffin and casket works, a rolling and a planing mill, silk-mills, dye-works and railroad-shops. ”

“ Clark, at an expense of about $45,000, erected the new Pioneer Mills, and Planing Mills, the former of which were leased to E. Delavan Hills & Co. for a term of years, and the latter run by Mr. Clark’s Agent. These mills are located near the railroad depot, and are connected with the railroad by a side track and turn-table; are equipped with the best and most approved machinery manufactured. The power for propelling this machinery is furnished by two large boilers, a 150-horse-power Watts, Campbell & Co. engine, located in a brick building adjoining the mills. ”

“ We are so absorbed in the tumult of mass output that we scarcely realize the part played by the old mills in rearing the cornerstone of our vast industrial activity. The phrase, “horse power,” now geared to myriad millions of units, in all likelihood, began with the horse-operated grist mill. A horse provided the power. The creaking water wheels with their rhythmic splash, were the outposts of the hydroelectric age which has harnessed rivers and falls and wrought marvels of production the world over. ”

“ The model mill of the State, and of the world, for the reduction of silver ore, is the new 60-stamp mill of the Consolidated Virginia Mining Company. In this mill is to be found all that is valuable in any mill, and much in the way of machinery that can be seen in no other works of the kind. ”

“ Some mines cannot be economically operated without the treatment of the ores upon, or close to, the mining property. With certain sorts of low-grade ore, or with those kinds of ores that may be concentrated before shipment, provision should be early made for the erection of appropriately designed mills. We say the subject should be considered early, but we do not advocate the premature erection of any mill. ”

“ So much is this the case that in one of our largest mills it is deemed preferable to move the middlings from one end of the mill to the other by means of a hopper bin on a car which runs on a track spiked to the floor, rather than to employ a conveyor. A mill built as I am going to describe would require from fifty to sixty horse-power to run it, and including steam power and building would cost from $10,000 to $12,000, according to location. ”

“ The richest portion is carried at once to the crushing mill, the poorer is thrown into another shed below, to be broken up and further picked, and the mere stones are wheeled off to the rubbish heap. The ore being broken small is thrown into the crushing mill, and passed once or twice through it, being returned to the mill by an endless chain of iron buckets, which dip into the heap of crushed ore below, and, carrying it up, empty themselves into the mill. ”

“ The mills have the air of being pit-head workings dealing with a cleaner material than coal. About them are lengthy conveyors, built up on high trestle timbers, that carry the logs from the water to the mill and from the mill to the dumps, that one instantly compares to the conveyors and winding gear of a coal mine. ”

“ The river, which here falls 28 feet in half a mile, is crossed by two railroad and two other bridges and by a dam of granite, 900 feet long and forty feet high; canals on either bank conduct the water to the mills. The mills, some of which are among the largest in the world, manufacture cotton and woolen goods, cloth and paper; and engines, boilers, machinery, clothing, hats etc. are also produced here. The woolen goods industry is of first importance, employing more than 11,000 people in two mills, while a third mill, making both cotton and woolen goods, employs over 5,000. ”

“ Most of us today, when we think of power, think of electricity, gas, or steam, but it is very simple to consider the water in an ordinary little stream and the amount of power it can deliver.
Although the machinery built by the early millwrights was a bit crude, nevertheless it was functional and worked with efficient success.
On a recent scouting trip George and I took through Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut, we visited a few restored mills. One of them was in Rowley, Massachusetts, just off the Main Road, called the “Jewel Mill”. ”

“ Farmers are cultivating their broad acres, woodsmen are chopping and hewing in the forest, miners are drilling in underground chambers, and the products of farm, forest, and mine are finding their way by river, road, and rail to the great distributing centres. In the town the machinery of mill and factory keeps busy thousands of operatives, and turns out manufactured products to compete with the products of the soil for right of way to the cities of the New World and the Old. ”

“ As far back as 1849 it seems natural to find a plan for financing a mill, by which fifteen planters would take each $4,000 worth of stock, select a site near their plantations, each detail three men, making a building force of forty-five, with teams and an overseer and general manager, the latter one of the stock-holders ”

“ Leading from the mill down into the lake was a sort of small railroad track, sloping like a little hill. And in the middle of the track, and extending up into the mill, was a big chain.
“What’s that for?” asked Ted.
“That chain pulls the logs up from the river, along this inclined runway, into the mill,” answered Mr. Martin. “Once the logs are in the mill they are put on a sort of platform, or on a traveling cradle, and then machinery pushes them close to the big buzz saw and they are cut up into boards.” ”

“ Meanwhile the population began to grow, immigrants began to pour in by the hundred thousand, and the westward stream opened up new country and new timber supplies, and a lumber industry of marvellous size began to develop. The small country mill, run in the manner of, and often in connection with, the grist mill, doing a petty business by sawing as occasion demanded, to order for home customers or export, gave way to the large mill establishment as we know it now ”

“ Aaron, therefore, might choose between seeking a market outside for his pig iron or building a mill to work it. To build a mill would require, first, a large outlay of capital, then an organization of expert workers and superintendents, and thirdly a market for his wrought iron in competition with the product of the established mill, now Enoch’s. ”

“ Proceeding on Saturday 25th July at 5 in the morning—at six we were three miles below Neisanger’s, abreast of Old-town creek on the right, and a floating mill owned by an Irishman named Pickets. These kind of mills are of a very simple construction—the whole machinery being in a flat, moored to the bank, and the stones being put in motion by the current. They have but little power, not being capable of grinding more than from fifteen to twenty bushels of wheat per day. ”

“ A retired mill president, whose decision to leave the field was perhaps affected by the condition she described, regretted that the companies are still laboring under decreased profits as a result of the fact that mills were [Pg 243] built more rapidly than the market for goods expanded to meet the development. [375] Another mill president thought that no more mills are likely to be built in his section too many years. ”

“ In this neighborhood miners are earning from half a dollar to two dollars a day. There are several large quartz mills not far from here. Common labor is worth ten dollars a month.
September 17. Spent the day in botanizing, blacksmithing, and examining a grist mill. Grist mills, in the less settled parts of Tennessee and North Carolina, are remarkably simple affairs. A small stone, that a man might carry under his arm, is fastened to the vertical shaft of a little home-made, boyish-looking, back-action water-wheel, which, with a hopper and a box to receive the meal, is the whole affair. ”

“ Where land is expensive, or there are limitations in the space suitable for building, it is frequently necessary to build mills and shops higher than would be warranted by good judgment under other conditions; but where circumstances will permit it, the one-story mill has been very successful, not merely in immunity from fire, and very low cost per square foot of floor, but also in the advantages of manufacturing, particularly in regard to cost of supervision and movement of the stock in process of manufacture. ”

“ Even in the iron industry where could a line be drawn-at the end of mining the ore, the production of the pig-iron or steel ingots, when the rolling mill operation is completed, fabrication on order or at some stage of manufacture into standard merchandise? ”

“ There is one point which is of much interest to mill owners who wish to change their mills over to the gradual reduction process, that is, how far they can utilize their present plan of milling machinery in making the change. Of course the cleaning machinery is the same In both cases, so are the elevators, conveyors, bolting chests, etc. But to use the millstone is a debatable question. After carefully considering the matter I have come to the conclusion that it has its place, and an important one at that, under the new regime, viz., that of reducing the finer purified middlings to flour. ”

“ Another phrase is, “It’s all grist that comes to his mill,” meaning that the individual gets all the breaks and capitalizes every advantage. Then too, there is the phrase, “run of the mill,” which has become synonymous with routine product or performance, and “he has a millstone ’round his neck.” Perhaps the best known of all is the saying, “The mills of the gods grind slowly yet they grind exceeding fine.” Many a man has had this hurled at him when his sins of omission or commission have eventually overtaken him.
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The toll for having grain ground in a grist mill was usually paid in kind. ”

“ The excitement in regard to the mines discovered and being worked, those newly found and those yet to be found—in regard to town sites, mill sites and all manner of property in the new land—was at its greatest height, when that occurred which for a time paralyzed every industry, and alike brought business and prospecting to a stand. ”

“ They maintain that the stones produce a higher grade of flour than can be 6 made by modern machine methods. So great was the demand for the millstone-ground flour that a manufacturing firm in Indiana made a miniature grist mill equipped with stones which was used in many private homes and on some farms. Power was furnished by a motor, a far cry from the old water wheel.
This picturesque mill is located just north of Dayton and is more than 100 years old. ”

“ The American mills being devoted to a large variety of operations, instead of being confined to a single process after the manner of those of European type, require a great deal more care in their organization, not merely in the original lay-out for the purpose of arranging for the passage of the stock in processes from the raw material to the finished product in as straight lines as possible, but due consideration should also be given to providing facilities for the enlargement of the mill. ”

“ There seems to be a strange diversity of opinion as to the extent of the participation of machinery manufacturers in the financing of the mills. A mill man of Anderson, South Carolina, said that the machinery people have played a larger part than the commission houses in the establishment of Southern mills; that the machinery business was at a standstill in New England at the time of the great activity in mill building in the Southern States, and the machinery manufacturers began to look about for mills to equip. ”

“ The roller process has almost entirely driven out all other processes. Now and then we see by the roadside an old fashioned mill with the upper and nether stone, but we seldom see one that is prosperous and thriving. Millers, like everybody else in these days, do business on a large scale and to make flour on a large scale they must use the roller-mill. Thus the hole in the rock in which a handful of grain was laboriously crushed has, through long ages of growth, become the great factory in which thousands of barrels of flour are made in a day. ”

“ In all the world there is no other wizard that could have formed it, no other smith that could have welded its parts together or forged its lid of many colors. You have only to whisper your wishes into the small orifice on the top of the mill, and it will begin to run—you can hear its wheels buzzing and its levers creaking. Lay it on this side and it will grind flour—flour for your kitchen, flour for your neighbors, flour for the market. Turn the mill over, thus, and it will grind salt—salt for seasoning, salt for the reindeer, salt for everything. ”

“ To grind their grain, the villagers used hand mills with crank and gear, or a communal mill, usually built of oak, driven by power transmitted through a solid oak shaft, banded with iron as reinforcement, to internal gear wheels of elm. ”

“ The flour-mill, not yet completed, is to be worked by a steam-engine, and is to be arranged like the Baltimore steam-mill. In a short time four sets of stones will be in operation, and an oil mill is also to be connected therewith. As careful managers, the directors of the society, in the upper part of the mill, which is five stories high, put away grain enough for a year, in order to be secured against scarcity, which is even in this happy country much to be dreaded. ”

“ Since air flows through with the grain the flour is not heated very much. This type of mill is small, very fast, intermediate in price between steel mills and stone mill, lasts a long time, but when grinding, sounds like a Boeing 747 about to take off. ”