Thank you to Martin Watts whose informative visit to Lapford Mill shed much light on the maintenance, management and running of the mill. Martin had visited Lapford Mill previously in 1983 and was able to make several recommendations, as well as sharing some of his photos from thirty years ago!  You can see these in [...]

Thank you to Mike Jones whose carpentry skills and careful planning ensured a smooth project delivered on time and in budget!  We now have a beautiful new wheel.  We are now coating the shrouds with a fresh coat of black bitumen paint and thinking that we probably should have done this before fitting the timber!!

Each timber segment needed to be cut and planed to fit the shrouds as we progressed around the wheel.  We inspected each of the oak spokes and although weather-warn, we decided that these were in good condition but the fixings needed to be tightened to the hartwood in each case.

The first job before removing the rotten timbers is to make formers to 'fix' the shrouds in place.  As we remove the existing timber, the shrouds will move and we could end up with a crooked wheel.  We discovered that the shrouds were not perfectly parallel, possibly due to expansion and damage to the old [...]

The new timber for the water wheel arrived, freshly milled by Winkleigh Timber from seasoned timber they recently recovered from Greenhithe Docs on the Thames. In consultation, Winkleigh Timber recommended this pitch pine source as it has spent its life submerged in water and would be well suited to our wheel. We chose this source [...]

During the storm of 2012, the water wheel was damaged and became free of the main shaft. In order to redress the wheel, it needs to be jacked up and timber chocks inserted between the wheel hub and the shaft, locking the two together.Many thanks here to Roland Boatfield from Lapford who has both the [...]