Hi Don:

Thanks for stopping in with a great pic, and your approach to the lifting mode problems.

Boy, When you mentioned the round windlass wheel, it sure brought back old memories from days gone by.

At UCV we had in storage, house and barn moving equipment that included rollers, and the winch apparatus which was a simple wertical wooden shaft about 8 " in diameter set into a moveable skid with a bottom and top wooden bearing. tha vertical shaft had near the top slots to insert a long pole maybe 12 feet in
length.

You could literally move just about anything including a 3 bay barn or house by mooring the skid to a dead man or other permanent object, and then attaching a cable or heavy rope to the object to be moved and thence around the vetical shaft.

If the object was really heavy you could insert a set of pulley blocks between the winch and the object to be moved to increase the pulling power of the winch. This scheme could again be increased by increasing proportionatly the number of sheaves in the pulley blocks

I interviewed a gentleman who specialized in moving buildings with such an apparatus, and he said he often used only the power of one person walking around pushing the pole on the winch, he said it was sufficient to move a very large barn.

I also ran across a winch in a driveshed that was mounted above one of the bays, it consisted of just a round axle sitting in 2 wood bearings at the ends, and had smsll round poles that were inserted in the shaft near one end, that could be used to rotate the shaft to lift any number of different objects, a good alternative for today's stationary hydraulic\electric power units

This is alittle off subject but I also ran across water powered winches that were used to hoist bags of wheat and other forage grains to various levels of gristmills. These winches were very simply constructed using again horizontal wood shafts and friction pulleys their adaption can be explained more fully if anyone wishes just ask.

Thanks for coming on board everyone, I hope you enjoy this foray into the days of yesteryear and to peak into the uneducated minds of those that could really imagine solutions to countless numbers of seemingly unendless moving and hoisting problems, of course one being to raise the frames of large barns\houses outbuildings and mills in times of low manpower. This is not to mention tearing out tree stumps and moving large rocks in the land clearing early phase of the settlement of any area.

NH