O/T What I Saw Today, Savannah Tn.

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Aug 4, 2011

This is what I saw just south of Savannah Tn. on a county road. It's a Leffel turbine. I recognized it because I saw one just like it in use at the Alley Mill just west of Eminence Mo.
The Alley Mill turbine is about 4 ft. across at it's widest point and develops 120 H.P. from the big pulley on top of the turbine. This turbine is about 5 ft. across at it's widest point.
While you are looking at these photos, remember that the spring water that comes out the Alley Spring is a constant 59 to 61 degrees summer and winter. That thought ought cool you while you're looking.

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Aug 4, 2011

This shot shows a lot of neglect. I would say the mill that this turbine was in, was destroyed years ago by flooding and this piece of iron was salvaged while the old was being demolished as a clean up. The piece was sumerged for a long time.
Quote from the Alley Spring page
Located under the back porch is the turbine pit. In it sat a thirty five inch Leffel turbine. Belts from the turbine brought power into the basement. A control wheel on the porch allowed the miller to control how much water entered the turbine and thereby control its speed. This ability to control the speed was one of the innovations that made turbines preferable to the old water wheels.

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Aug 4, 2011

This shows the top of the turbine where the shaft would have been connected to a gear or pulley. The Laffel turbine didn't need water to fall very far to produce power but, needed a large volume of water. The Alley Mill Spring was large and very deep.

Muddyjoe15 · Aug 4, 2011

Im assuming that this took the place of water wheels in grist/feed mills?

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Aug 4, 2011

This shot shows the home of the folks that own the turbine (It's at the entrance of their driveway)
The link "Alley Mill" will take you to the site where there is more info and images.
I'll bet if this old turbine could talk, it could tell some mighty fine stories.

Alley Mill

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Aug 4, 2011

No, it made possible the use of low head water supplies to generate power as long as the source was of large volume. The photo is of a Fitz Overshoot water wheel from their catalog. The Fitz wheel was very eficient in that it carried the water from the gate at the top all the way down to the bottom of the wheel and did not splash (or very little) and used the force of the water at the top as well as the weight of the water all the way to the bottom. This wheel is placed so as to use a small mountain stream coming from above.

Va-59-03-01-Barger_Mill-6-FWW_Co-1928-pD-tHazen-07-12-09.jpg

Muddyjoe15 · Aug 4, 2011

Oh i see so it acts like a gear redction (in a manner of speaking)? Sorry if im asking stupid questions. I really love history and old bulidings. Thanks for sharing the link, looks like a really cool place to visit.

Paul from MI · Aug 4, 2011

I saw a similar but smaller Leffel turbine years ago at a working grist mill in southern Indiana. It was way over 100 years old and still working. I think it was built in Springfield, OH

Welding man · Aug 4, 2011

Walt I have one at my shop right now, a smaller unit, that I am rebuilding, for an old mill near me. They have three of them.The mill still grinds corn meal of several kinds, buckwheat flour,etc. and has since the late 1800's. I have the turbine out of the center housing and will try to post some pictures.They had wooden bearings and the turbine sat on a wooden thrust. I have a new one to install.

Russ from MN · Aug 4, 2011

The paper mill that I worked in used something similar but they were mounted horizontally, four turbines per shaft developed about 1000 hp with 23 ft of head. most mills in the Midwest used horizontal shafts so they could direct drive grinders for making pulp. They were built by Allis Chalmers about 1907 and most of them are still running. They have generators on them now as the pulp is ground with large electric refiners (12000 hp) The two originally 1907 paper machines are still running too, all the equipment has had many rebuilds and improvements.

Welding man · Aug 4, 2011

Allis Chalmers used to build turbines for hydro-electric generators also. They were a great old company. There is still a lot of their industrial equipment in use today.I have worked on some of of their hydro's and large water pumps.

John Harmon · Aug 4, 2011

The shaft connection appears to be some what of a Lovejoy Coupling design with out the rubber torsion link of course..

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Aug 4, 2011

Russ, where does the water come from?

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Aug 4, 2011

Allis Chalmers also built some of the biggest steam engines in the U.S., They also built dynamos. Allis Chalmers got their start by building mining equipment and branched out into farm equipment to keep their foundrys busy during slow periods. The reason they built some of the largest steam engines was that they could pour some of the bigest castings (bed plates)

Walt in Jaxn Tn. · Aug 4, 2011

It works like a modern hydro electric turbine. Water comes down a pipe to a chamber around the turbine housing. The stationary housing has fixed blades that direct the flow of water in the most eficient manner against the blades on the shaft that are shaped a lot like a turbine in a diesel turbo aspirated engine (I forget the name of it)

Hotflashjr · Aug 5, 2011

That is really neat! In college I took a local history course about all the mills in Rhode Island and Massachusetts that used water as power in the early 1900's. It was a really interesting class and we did some visits to a few old factories that still had the old equipment in the basement but not in use. One of the local cranberry equipment fabrication shops by us up until a few years ago ran all of their drills and lathes off of a belt pulley system that was originally run by water and more recently by an electric motor.

showcrop · Aug 5, 2011

The rods running to the vanes make it appear to have variable pitch vanes. Maybe the Navistar engineers should go study it to see if they can figure out how to make them work.

kito169 · Aug 5, 2011

Thanks for sharing this. I really enjoyed the pictures and history lesson. Rick

Russ from MN · Aug 5, 2011

The Mill was on the Mississippi river, the water comes in all around the outside thru the wickets, which were movable, They were connected to a governor when grinding wood. When generating electricity they bring them up to speed and once the phase is locked then the wickets are fully opened. This can be done because the phase lock with the grid will control the RPM, which I think is 600 RPM. One other neat thing is that the support bearings were wooden blocks, (lignum vitae sp?) It's a special wood from S America that is like natural oilite! I wish I had some pictures, I will try to google it.

Kirk Grau · Aug 5, 2011

Enjoyed this post. Was interested in the Fitz wheel shown down a ways and ended up surfing around for an hour or so. Turns out the Fitz company was headquarted near me in Hanover, PA. I have been here more than 20 years and never heard anything about it and they were the world"s largest manufacturer of wheels. Stayed in business until the 1960s doing repairs, grandson of founder died and nobody interested in carrying on the company. Know where some of the buildings are still standing that they were in.

Thanks Again,

Kirk

george md · Aug 5, 2011

Welding man ,

I built a set of wooden bearings for a
vertical turbine the drives a motor that is
set up as a generator . Bearings are made of
lignum vita ,the same wood that is used to
prop shaft bearings for ships . It is quite
hard and I used metal working tools to make
the cuts to match the shaft size.

george

Gary Buck · Aug 16, 2011

Thanks for the pics and the history lesson. This has been VERY informative. I enjoy looking at old equipment, although some of it is not very old to me. Thanks, Gary

O/T What I Saw Today, Savannah Tn.

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