Horse whim at the Östra Hage Mines

In Persberg, all hoisting had up until the year 1719 been done with hand winches, but now three horse whims had been erected. The horse whims would for many years be the most efficient ore hoisting device and were used at several smaller mines all the way up to around 1900.

In an interview from 1962 with Johan Blåder, born on September 17, 1876, in an earth dugout at Norra Hammarrepet in Persberg, Blåder tells about his upbringing and life at the mines. He recounts that at 14 years of age he began working as a ”whim driver boy,” according to Blåder the worst job you could have. He drove the horse whim at Lyckfallet, probably at the Boland Mine. For every barrel that was hoisted, the horse and the whim driver boy walked 18 rounds. Rock was hoisted during the day and water at night. He tells that the horses were often difficult to drive; they did not enjoy the hard and monotonous work, and the worst was driving during cold winter nights — ”it could be so cold that the air cracked.”

In 1898, Manager H. V. Tiberg writes the following about horse whims: ”The limit for the use of a horse whim, when one horse is used, lies at a hoisting quantity of approximately 125 ton-settings per day, corresponding to, for example, a hoisting of 25 tons of rock and water from a depth of 5 settings, and when two horses are used, at double the quantity. Usually the net load is close to or around 1/2 ton and the hoisting speed 0.16 m per second, and if one calculates the work performed by the horse based on the gross weight hoisted, one finds it amounts to 1.6 up to 2.3 horsepower, not counting friction and power loss at the horse whim itself.” (1 setting ≈ 10 m. TN)

Transcribed from: The Värmland Mining Association Annals, 1898. January 2025 TN.

”In the report of 1683, the mine master states that he has had a horse whim constructed for the New Mine, and at the autumn assembly of the same year, the mine bailiff was ordered to commission a horse whim rope at Hennickehammar, so that ’the whim shall now without any delay be set in operation.'” (Harald Carlborg)