The Guide block which will be described a little later is in itself a very important part of this whole setup, it looks very crude at first glance, it has very few metal parts, and could be constructed right on site from sections of hardwood that was probably available right at hand--like most of the parts that make up the mill itself--enough about the head block for now back to attaching the pitman to it as we work our way up from the barrel wheel----
before we attach it to the head block, it will be necessary to ensure that the centre line of the pitman is directly underneath the attaching point on the head block--well now out comes the heavy plumb bob with a fine nylon line-it is dropped down from the centre of the attaching point on the head block to the pin on the offset crank on the axle of the barrel wheel. The axle at this point has no pitman on it, and will be revolved slowly from the bottom of the stroke to top dead centre, at the bottom of the stroke calculations are taken where the plumb touches it and then at the top also where the plumb touches it--this will verify how level the axle of the turbine is, at this point some adjustment of the wood bearings supporting the axle may have to be made to ensure that all is perfectly level.
I might ad here that an axle out of level will destroy the attaching bearing in a very short time, so no mistakes, or all your work is for naught!!!
If all seems good then the pitman is once again slipped on the pin installing spacers on both sides of the pitman to hold it its proper position, these spacers are large flat washers specially made for this particular task, finally a wrought iron bolt it slipped through the hole in the pin and lock nutted to ensure that it remains, until it needs to be removed
Just a note here the pin on the crank is about 1.5" wider than the width of the pitman, this width is needed to be able to compensate for sideways movement of the mill building, in relation to the position of the turbine, which will not move with the building, it is my experience that showed that our mill continuously moved towards the lagoon in 50 years of operation, causing problems with pitman attachments such as wear on the pitman bearings due to operating the mill with out of perpendicular attaching points---our mill actually moved so much that we had to take drastic measures to keep it in operation, until we could reposition the barrel wheel each time during 3 bebuilds
One of these drastic measures was to cable the mill structure below ground level to a dead man, this slowed things down but did not eradicate it completely
well so much tonight, didn't get the crank attached but we will
