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Page 9

Newsletter 101, Summer 2013 © Hampshire Mills Group

 

Mr. Brandrick Digitally Draws the Machinery in Hockley Mill
By Peter Mobbs

In Wales there lives a man who is a wizard with computers. His name is John Brandrick.

Since retiring from work some years ago John has made it his mission in life to use his computer skills to accurately record the working mechanism of wind and water mills. He has measured and drawn many mills and the details can be seen by visiting his website: http://www.a0tech.co.uk/html/pontdolgoch.html

Back in February he contacted Hampshire Mills Group requesting access to Hockley Watermill so that he could measure and record details of the mill machinery.

For health and safety reasons it is not a good idea for a single person to clamber around the working area of a mill, so I volunteered to stay with John during the day - at least I could phone for help if he fell into the mill race!

John said that he wanted an early start so we met up at 8:30 at the mill. He immediately sprang into action taking masses of measurements which he jotted down on a large sheet of paper. The resulting data made as much sense to me as looking at a page of Egyptian hieroglyphics. (fig. 1) I asked John about this fact and he confessed to me that unless he uploaded this data onto his computer very quickly they did not make much sense to him either!

To measure the diameter of shafts and other circular features he used a massive set of home made wooden callipers. (fig. 2). John is a fast worker, and by mid afternoon he had collected adequate data for his requirements which seemed to consist of one page of hieroglyphics for each floor of the mill.

Deciphering the data from his worksheets seemed to take much longer than scribing it down. The process took several weeks, but was well worth the wait.  Now there is a collection of accurately scaled three-dimensional drawings of Hockley’s mill machinery; typical examples are shown at pictures 3 and 4. I feel that John’s images really bring the mill to life - well done John!

Very soon it will be possible to see all of these drawings by accessing a link to the HMG website. John has said that his next HMG project will be to make drawings for Headley Mill. However, an initial hurdle to overcome was to obtain the means to open the mill door as the key could not be found! This problem has been solved – but that’s scope for more news in your next Newsletter!

What a fascinating job for a chaperone and what superb quality images Mr. Brandrick has produced.-Ed.

 

 
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