Bor windmill

BOR windmill is in the Holmogory district of Russia. It is an 8 sided smock mill placed on a square base constructed from logs. Above the ground floor there is an arrangement of beams to form triangles which carry a wide flat roof. The roof was accessed through a door on the first floor which provided a balcony for access to the sails. At the center of each of the 8 flats there is an iron ring to lash the end of the sails to when stationary. The tapered tower was formed by squared off tree trunks laid horizontally and the whole building interlocked as you would find on a log cabin and then clad externally with heavy vertical boards. The main shaft is supported on a short post in the ground and appears it ran in an iron tray probably filled with tallow for lubrication. Love this mill - tree trunk and bolder engineering, ingenuity of the locals!

There is a complete and very interesting article with many photos and drawings about the 2 remaining mills, their history and the district in the current edition of The International Molinological Society’s journal noIM87 which should be available from the Mills Archive Trust and which I have been fortunate enough to provide some the illustrations for the Bor mill, based on measured drawings supplied by Museum Malye Korely, Archangelsk. Some of the unused drawings are shown on this page

 

The method of raising the sacks was by turning the cross shaped handles which pulled the beam on the floor above towards the outside of the building moving the top of the vertical shaft and tightening the belt around the main shaft

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