I Built a Medieval Watermill to Power My Tools

in this video I'm recreating one of the most important inventions for industrialization the water wheel with this device you can harness the power of nature and flow your water and use it to power countless tools tools before this I would have to physically operate myself so let's start saving some of my sweats and hours of Labor and harness the power of nature [Music] it has been clear from my previous projects manual labor is a lot of work so finding a way to power tools that's not limited to my own endurance and strength is going to be a huge multiplier when it comes to getting things done just operating a hand saw is very exhausting pretty quickly but with a mill connected to a water wheel even if it runs very slowly it can just run continuously without ever getting tired I've already built a few tools now with the intention of connecting it to an external power source like a water wheel and have a few more along the way just waiting to take advantage of this power source the design of a water wheel comes in a lot of varieties shapes and forms you could even argue that modern hydroelectric dams are a form of the modern water wheel for how important this device is for my goals and the wide variety of devices I'm hoping to power with it it's pretty likely I'm going to have to build at least a few different versions of water wheels so rather than kind of getting down into the very specifics of this it seemed a lot easier to just start with a simple water wheel and kind of learn as I go test it out see what is and isn't working and how I can adjust it and make improvements to it from there but this technically isn't even the first water wheel that I made I actually started another project attempting to harness the power of animals by attempting to bring back the historical job of the turnstile dog the wheel I built for that was hopefully going to be reusable as the first draft of the water wheel trying to harness the power of a dog is proven to be a little bit more challenging than I expected and I'm still working on that project and that wheel is not available to be reused yet so I looked at a few different options of wheels and found a really straightforward and simple one that had some nice features that made it a little bit easier to build most of the big bottom of the buckets is also the paddle allowing it to be one continuous piece and a little bit easier and fewer parts to assemble I want to look at other forms of water wheels they often have a lot more paddles so I think that's going to be probably a really easy Improvement to make is to add more so with a design in mind now I need to cut up a bunch of wood unfortunately I have to do it by hand because I don't have a water wheel yet one of my previous videos I made this pretty nifty machine for cutting wood and it has a frame saw inside of some rails here with a spring on the top so with a push of a lever you push it down and springs back up so it makes it pretty powerful 12th century table saw that is really useful for making straight cuts making a little bit less work however this is really only set up for rip cuts and I have a lot of cross Cuts I need to do because when you have to cut it with the board you'll start to hit the side rails so what we really need is a different type of frame saw on here and for making rip Cuts you have the saw blade in the center and then you cut along the length for cross cut you need Arrangement more like this with a saw blade one side middle bar to hold it rigid and then a tensioner Rod here so my thought is basically attach a saw like this to the frame running this way so then we have the blade out here we can extend our cutting platform and then we can cut it sideways [Music] all right [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] sponsor have you ever wished for convenient and delicious way to meet your traditional goals Factor makes meeting your nutritional goals easier than ever are you too busy to cook with Factor you can skip the grocery store skip the chopping prepping and cleaning up fresh never frozen meals are ready to eat in just two minutes heat and enjoy then get back outside and soak up the warm weather at facta they offer a flavor-packed options on their menu each week to fit your variety of Lifestyles from keto to Cali smart vegan and veggie and Protein Plus prepared by chefs and approved by dietitians each meal has all the ingredients you need to feel satisfied all day long while meeting your goals there's always something new to try as someone who has personally experienced the benefits of factor I can confidently say it is trend for my routine and it offers a really quick meal when you're deep in a project and forget to eat and are attempted just to go out and buy something now you can have something healthy and refreshing within two minutes I do factor75.com or click the link below and use code htme 50 to get 50 off your first Factor box that's Factor 75 dot com htme 50. [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you obviously the most challenging part was finding a body of water at high enough elevation and then find a way to pipe it all the way to my property using a series of bamboo tubes obviously that's what I did pay no attention to that high-pitched whirly noise or any suspicious tubing it's very satisfying to finally get this project together it's something that's been in my plans for several years now and it's definitely and now the largest project I've built the actual engineering of it was a bit more challenging than I originally expected trying to keep it all evenly constructed and jointed together and the matching between the two sides of the wheel did a bit more work that I initially planned and even then I still had to seal a bunch of gaps in the wood for it to run pretty well but now it's all together and I have my next major step towards my own Industrial Revolution I tried connecting the water wheel to my saw using a simple crank and connecting rod but that didn't have too much lock I think I really need to find a way to connect it at the top or the bottom of the actual saw otherwise it pulls and binds in the frame so the next challenge is going to be all the gearing and such to effectively connect my tools to this power source so with this tool I'm now able to harness some of the powers of Nature and use them for my own use unfortunately sometimes when you try to control nature it fights back and ran into the metal rod that's sticking out for the axle of the water mill more than once that's that's a really embarrassing part is that I did it once kind of call it a day picked it up the next day and proceeded to do the exact same thing and hit my head again and leave an even bigger scratch that was fun but like as I said I've been anticipating this project for a while it feels like one of the major stepping stones for the Industrial Revolution is getting other sources of power and figuring out how to gear and utilize it like this so very excited about this lots of new options opening up some of the next projects we'll be making improvements to the wire wheel and getting it connected to different tools and start to use that power source I do want to eventually once it's all kind of figured out bring it to an actual River Source generate actual power hopefully actually build some sort of generator that connect to it with our wheel and then have an actual hydroelectric power plant and I'm hoping I'm hoping there's enough time before the end of the year to do a windmill as well as another source of power and maybe even possibly start getting into solar so lots of possibilities opening up with this thank you to all of our supporters on patreon we wouldn't have made it to this Milestone without you thanks for watching [Music] if you enjoyed this video be sure to subscribe and check out other content we have covering a wide variety of topics also if you've enjoyed these series consider supporting us on patreon we are largely a fan-funded channel and depend on the support of our viewers in order to keep our Series going thanks for watching thank you

Channel: How To Make Everything

Views: 403,343

Keywords: HTME, DIY, Fun, Smart, Learn, Teach, Maker, History, Science, Innovator, Education, Educational, School, Invention, Agriculture, Textiles, Industry, Technology, how to make everything

Id: Kpsdb50zEmE

Length: 12min 12sec (732 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2023