[TheForge] weld question

[Mike Spencer]

> ...but without a water wheel powered line shaft machine shop it
> might not be considered traditional either...

The Saugus Ironworks is really, *really* traditional.  When the
American Iron & Steel Institute (I think it was) sponsored the
archaeology and complete reconstruction in the 50s, they did
everything exactly like the 1630s, based on scholarly research and the
artifacts dug up at the site.  Fired it up and ran it, huge gouts of
water cascading over the multiple water wheels and cranking
whole-tree-sized wooden shafts.  It's the best 30 seconds of the movie
they made about it.

I visited in the 70s, after the US Parks Service took it over, and
it's still authentic (except they hadn't run the water wheels for
years.)  After looking everything over for an hour or two, I climbed
the bank and peered through the hedgze above the hammer mill's
headrace.  City street.  Sidewalk.  At eye-level theres a Buick
hubcap, on a parked Buick where there should be water.  Huh. What
happened to the mill pond and canal?

Asked.  Well, there's an authentic-looking little coal shed down at
the foot of the hill near the tailrace and the little cove off the
river.  It's occupied by a great huge electric pump to recirculate the
water in volume suffucient to run the mill.  Apparently reconstructing
the mill pond would have meant demolishing many acres of urban Saugus,
Mass.

Sometimes 100% authenticity just costs too much. :-)

- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada 
                                 
mspencer@tallships.ca            
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/