OK. This is at a cabin owned by very good friends of ours. It's located in the North Carolina Mountains not far from the town of Franklin where the Water Wheel Factory is located. http://www.waterwheelfactory.com/
I got my first look at it about 8 years ago and knew right off I wanted to help preserve it. The first thing we did was to rebuild the sluices and get water flowing back to it. That was the hard part, re figuring what they had done back in the 40's. The old bearings had these big caps that you unscrew, fill with grease and then screw down again. We worked them pumping in lots of new grease till we felt we had purged as much of the old as possible. After sitting dormant for about 40 years it was turning again.
Inside looked like parts from Frankenstein's Laboratory
A shot of the gears
The Label on the generator said 14KW, 120 volts DC and if I remember the rpm's was something like 1500. Heres a close up
On the control panel there are two round knobs that turn, one in the middle and one on a large black round thing up top. This picture is whats behind the control knob in the middle.
There's a second smaller generator that isn't hooked up. Maybe it was used first and upgraded.
The Label on the control panel
And my favorite, the knife switch
I know some of the images may be too large but I think they all average around 100K. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I have. We plan to build a small alternator and hook it up to the 48 inch gear. Just a guess but I don't think cogging will present a problem.
Andy
