What I have been working on

For my next article in The Shed magazine, I have been designing and building this water wheel

The whole thing is about 1100mm high, and it can kick along at a fair rate of knots, even just with a hose as the water supply.

I’ve designed it to use either water weight (quantity, slow moving), as well as water velocity (smaller quantity, flowing at speed).

It has a square drive on one side of the shaft, so it can be used to do real work, and at some stage I’ll add some traditional gears to do just that.

No glue used in this project – it is all coach bolts.  About 170 or so in all.