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Title: |
1866 Article-Reynolds & Totman, Totman's Wood Mill |
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Source: |
Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for the Year of 1866, pg. 237 |
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Insert Date: |
1/15/2013 5:15:25 PM |
TOTMAN'S WOOD MILL
One of the cheapest and most effective labor-saving implements that I have met with, where a farmer has not the advantage of a railway horse-power for driving a drag-saw, is a wood-sawing machine, made by Reynolds & Totman, Fredonia, Chautauqua County, New York. The accompanying illustration will furnish a fair idea of the horse-power, which is a sweep power, and may be operated by one horse, or two horses abreast, which axe amply sufficient to chive the saw. The horse-power is a paragon of wonderful ingenuity, and yet it is so plain that a good mechanic will at once express suprise that the device has not been thought of before. The wheels cannot be shown advantageously by an engraving; therefore I will endeavor to describe the various parts.
There are three wheels for producing the motion of the saw. The first and largest wheel is made of cast iron, about four feet in diameter, with teeth, or cogs, on the periphery. This large wheel is bolted firmly to the frame, so that it never turns around. The small pinion of the second wheel plays in the teeth of the rigid wheel, and as it turns on its own axis, it travels around the large rigid wheel. The journal of the third wheel passes down through the hub of the rigid wheel, turning in the hub as in a box. On the lower end of this journal there is a balance wheel, with a wrist-pin in one of the arms, to which the pitman is attached. All the wheels play horizontally, instead of working in a vertical position. The tramway and cross-head of the pitman work in the frame beneath the platform, or wooden trunk, over which the team travels.
I have seen one of these machines operate; and, judging from the rapidity with which the saw, when driven by only one light horse, cut off a log of hard wood, I think this is the most economical machine in me, where a farmer proposes to construct a machine solely for sawing firewood, or cuts of trees for timber. I witnessed the operation of a saw when driven by one poor horse, when it cut off a tough elm log fourteen inches in diameter in eighteen seconds. |
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1866 Reynolds & Totman, Totman's Wood Mill
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