Rekottila Farm Mill, Paimio

A wind-powered corn mill in Finland.

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This wooden mill was moved to the local museum from Rekottila Farm, Kevola Village. The mill underwent repair when still in Rekottila in 1934/5. There is a date 1884 scribbled in charcoal on one of the beams. Tradition says that the mill was originally built on Isotalo Farm, Angelniemi Parish.

The body of the mill is levelled up on rocks on a rock outcrop. There is a square base. A slender tower housing the hollow post is surmounted by a small body with the primary drive. The long twin tailpole has a cartwheel at the end.

On the ground floor there is a four-armed compass great spur wheel with wedged cogs, and of a peculiar type of shank which can really be shown only in a photograph. It is sufficient to say that the shanks are let into the top side of the rim and not into mortise holes. This wheel is 64 in. diameter with 92 teeth, 2 3/8 in. pitch, 2 3/4 in. face, 1 1/2 in. deep, and is mounted on an octagonal wooden shaft 12 in. across flats. The hollow post is 27 in. square built up of eight pieces of pine.

At the bottom of the wooden shaft is a solid wood pulley, made from timber nailed on to the shaft, which drove a shingle-making machine by a belt passing out through the side of the lower part of the mill. The shaft itself has a pot and pintle bearing.

The stones have gone, as have the stone spindles and nuts; but the round iron bridging-boxes on wooden bridgetrees, with screw and nut adjustment, remain. One adjusting nut has a handle to it in the manner of Whitmore and Binyon, Suffolk. (e.g. Buttrum's Mill, Woodbridge, Suffolk). The sprouts have wooden shutters and cleats on the uprights below the bridgetrees. Only the ground floor is left, but there was once a first floor, that carried the stones, reached by a ladder. Both ground floor and first floor were supported on clasp-arm frames of very heavy construction, and the hollow post projects just below the upper of the two frames. The first floor is on the level of the eaves, to which the roof sloped steeply from the hollow post.

There is no longer any method of getting into the top to see the primary drive, but there is a ladder up to a platform with seats round, from which looking south-west in clear weather a good view would be obtained.

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