THE FLYWHEEL

by John Burchill

In 1932 a broken main drive shaft at Burchills mill in Nelson necessitated the acquisition and installation of a engine, drive shaft, and flywheel. Isreal Russell was dispatched to remove the engine from the Douglastown mill and deliver it to Nelson. The Miramichi Lumber Company in Douglastown loaned their engine, drive shaft and flywheel. Their mill, along with most of the others on the river, was shut down because of the depression. In the meantime, two well known and respected millwrights from Sinclair's and Snowball's were hired to remove the old engine and install the new one.
Isreal responded in quick order and proposed to bring the equipment up in pieces on a sloven pulled by horses. The flywheel was massive and extremely heavy. It had a diameter of fifteen feet and was three feet wide. There was a great concern that the French Cove bridge would collapse under it's weight but fortunately it came in two pieces. To lessen the stress on the bridge Isreal used long ropes to haul the flywheel pieces across the bridge. One team of horses was placed on the west side of the bridge while the flywheel and the other team was on the east side. Using the ropes to haul the Slovene in this manner kept the weight of one team off the structure while the heavy flywheel was on it. This process was used for each piece of the engine and in due course it was finally delivered to Nelson. The next problem was to install the massive flywheel without removing supporting beams in the mill. It was a Friday afternoon and it was necessary to have the mill operating come Monday morning. A ship was coming for a load of lumber and time constraints were reaching a critical point. Everything was installed except the redoubtable flywheel and a great argument ensued about how this was to be accomplished. The experts wanted to cut the main beam of the mill to get it inside and hoisted onto the crank shaft.
Israel would not agree to this because he felt it would weaken the structure and create a whole new set of problems. In any event when five o'clock came and no plan had been settled upon the experts went home to think about it until the following morning. After they left Isreal asked some of t he men to come back after they had a bite to eat. He had formulated a plan in his mind and felt they could do what the others were hung up on. Using block and tackle they hauled the first half of the flywheel in under the beams of the mill and placed it under the shaft. Once there they jacked it up so that it was resting directly under the shaft and using a bit of ingenuity they bolted a flange of flat iron over the shaft onto the flywheel. Next they turned the half wheel over until it was on top of the shaft. They used more block and tackle to do this and then they braced it in place. Then they brought in the bottom half of the wheel and jacked it up underneath the top half. All that was left to do was bolt them together into one big flywheel mounted on the shaft. As the last bolt was being tightened the seven o'clock whistle blew. They had worked all night! At eight o'clock the two experts arrived back to continue the job and were more than somewhat chagrined to find the problem solved and the job completed. unfortunately we have no recording of their reactions. This was the first major challenge that Israel Russell met and overcame in his lifelong career at Bur chill's. He was only twenty four years old at the time It is no exaggeration to say that of all the wonderful people that worked at Bur chill's over the years he was the closest to being a genius. In spite of the fact that he had no formal education he had a host of wonderful talents. The greatest of which was undoubtedly his ability to lead and inspire his men!