Otago Daily Times, Issue 2398, 12 October 1869
OUR LOCAL INDUSTRIES.
RENNIE AND MACGREGOR's FLOUR AND BARLEY MILLSThese mills, which are situated in the Woodhaugh Valley, Water of Leith, are the oldest in the Province of Otago having been erected: by Mr Edward M'Glashan, some fifteen years ago. They have seen many vicissitudes, having had their days of adversity as well as prosperity. When they came into the possession of Messrs Rennie and Macgregor, about fifteen months ago, they were in a most dilapidated condition, hot having done much work for a considerable period. The race had suffered not only from the ravages of time, but from the effects of floods, portions of it having been swept completely away. They found it necessary to construct a new race, at an expense of over L500; to make additions to the buildings, and to substitute, for the old machinery, various modern inventions for the most effective prosecution of the work, and the saving of labour. The improvement, however, which we consider most worthy of notice, is the ingenuity displayed in the arrangement of the machinery. This will be apparent from the particulars which are given below.
To begin with the water race: the flume is over one thousand feet in length, being carried in a straight line from the dam, over two bends in the stream. It is constructed chiefly of black pine from Catlin's River, and is five feet four inches wide, and one foot deep, supported by substantial piles, caulked in the best manner, and coated with tar. The Leith is unusually low at present, and the whole of the water in the stream flows through the flume, and is required for the working of the mills. But at certain seasons there is so large a volume of water, and it rushes with such force, that it was necessary, for the safety of the dam and sluice, as well as of the flume, not only to excavate a new bed for the stream, but to erect a massive wall and to put down a most substantial pavement with heavy rocks.
The mill proper, is three storeys high, being sixty feet by eighteen and a half feet; and on a level with the second floor there is a granary forty-five by thirty-one feet. It runs two pair of stones of the ordinary kind, each four feet and a half in diameter. In rear of the building the ground is sufficiently elevated to allow the drays to place the wheat on the second floor without any hoisting, and from the landing it can be conveyed to the granary by means of trucks, or to the hopper direct, whence it passes through a smut machine on the lower flat. From the smut machine it passes through one of Ransom and Sims's patent separators. Being now thoroughly cleaned, it is taken by elevators - which are endless belts having upon them buckets enclosed in wooden tubes - to a hopper on the third floor, from whence it is supplied to the millstones on the second flat. Having been ground, the rough meal is raised by another set of elevators to the third story and emptied into a trough thirty-six feet in length, in which an Archimedean screw, commonly called a creeper, works horizontally, conveying it to the silk dressing machine, and cooling it at the same time. The meal, it should be mentioned, becomes greatly heated before it can escape from the edges of the stones, and is apt to clog into lumps. The cooling of it assists the separation of the flour. Having been conveyed to the head of the dressing machine, it passes through it, and into hoppers, whence it is returned to the second floor, where it is received in sacks, in the shape of flour, pollard, and bran.
The silk dressing machine is Young's patent, imported from Glasgow by Mesars Rennie and Macgregor. It consists of a cylindrical frame or reel, 24 feet long, and three feet three inches in diameter, covered with silk of a peculiar texture, made expressly for flour dressing. It is of various degrees of fineness, having from 90 to 140 threads to the inch. This reel is placed horizontally, and revolves rapidly within a large wooden bin; having a series of hoppers at the bottom. The flour is separated into different qualities, according to the fineness of the silk; the finest passing through the first portion, the second quality through the next, and so on; no portion of the silk being sufficiently open to let through the bran, which passes out at the lower end, being carried along by an endless screw.
Thus it will be seen that the wheat, just as it comes from the hands of the farmer, is emptied into a hopper, is smutted, cleaned, ground, separated, and sacked, without having been once touched or handled, until it is removed in sacks in the shape of flour ready for market. When there is a full supply of water, the mill can, with one day and one night hand, turn out forty tons of flour per week. We consider this a remarkable instance of what may be done in the way of saving labour by the exercise of mechanical skill and judgment, in planning a building and arranging machinery. Altogether, the arrangements for saving labour, and consequently enabling the proprietors to produce a good article at the lowest price, are most complete, and they deserve to be rewarded for their enterprise and ingenuity. All that is required now to reduce the expenditure of manual labour to the minimum is an apparatus used by the Americans for weighing as well as filling the flour. A trough is suspended on an axis, and beneath one end of the trough is the flour pan of a pair of scales. The flour sack or barrel is placed on the scale pan; flour flows through the trough into it, and when the proper quantity has been precipitated, and the scale pan and sack have descended by their own weight, a small piece of apparatus catches hold of the trough and tilts it in the contrary direction, so that no more flour can flow into the sack.
There is also a mill for making pearl barley, a most wholesome and nutritious article of diet, for which there should now be a better demand, seeing that its production is one of our local industries.
We learn that these mills are supplied with wheat chiefly from Oamaru, the grain from that district being harder and of better quality than that from the Taieri.
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