Video

Could you have a v belt wheel on a slight angle?

Buffalo is singular. Bison is plural. Like how goose is singular and geese is plural. I come from a small town by the name of Buffalo and it's pretty well engrained into our minds from a young age.😅

There's a company - Simply Bearings - they sponsor a few British CZcamsrs like Colin Furze, or supply discounted bearings for a shout out - I don't really know. It might be worth seeing if they do anything big which would help you on your way.. just a thought!

I like your approach. I have a water turbine that I built. Despite a lot of effort to make it reliable it has failed several times. It takes a lot of work to build something that runs 24/7 without failing.

Whoot! New project!!! 🥰

Cool railway .it's fantastic

Have a good look at the Australian outback mechanical pump windmill. minimal effort maximum output.

It might be worth looking at the drive mechanism of “American” style water pump windmills. I believe they work on a simple crank and connecting rod set to transfer the power. It would be less efficient but potentially far easier and cheaper to build.

wow. I will go looking for a lump of wood in the forest the next time!

Lovely to hear all the birds singing 😊

I have seen windmills using a differential vehicle axle and brakes where the input shaft became the output shaft and the sales took the place of one wheel, the brake on the other hub was on to send power and when released would effectively allow the sales to spin freely. Applying both brakes would stop rotation of the sales. 🔧👍

What about taking inspiration from the older steel/iron windmills such as those common around farms in outback Australia? I think it could be worth looking into they're often in very remote places they're as cheap as you can get and often were made or maintained using whatever scrap metal was nearby. The other useful thing is because they're relatively lightweight a simple flat prop on the back of them is enough to ensure they're always orientated optimally without you having to even think about wind direction. They're also durable as heck, I've seen them missing a bunch of the blades and still happily powering whatever they were made to power.

At one time in my life I pondered this same subject. I had a disused concrete stave silo 35 ft tall and 14 ft diameter on a windy ridge and the plan was to install a steel ring over the top which would serve to distribute the weight evenly over the whole diameter, it would have a 14 ft circular rail on which the entire mechanism would rest and rotate, similar to a sawmill carriage in the round. The axle would be parallel to the ground and the sails would be perpendicular, greatly simplifying the engineering. Really any welded steel structure, can be trussed and engineered to enable a vertical cylindrical shape at the low height you have described, you would not need to taper it structurally, although below the sails you could superficially build out a tapered base to achieve the traditional look. Plan was for 40 ft diameter sail/fan. Low speed high torque geared up to run a big generator. The "upstairs" mechanicals would be minimal, the main gear on the axle engaging the wallower and the tail fan to operate the furling drive, to rotate the head into or out of the wind to maintain a constant speed, along with a braking mechanism similar to a cable operated driveline band brake on a truck. The main drive shaft would extend 35 ft down to floor level to a transmission and the generator and any other mechanicals would be floor level.

You could it turn a cavitation water pump to make hot water to heat your home.

Danish TV farmer Frank Erichsen is building a traditional-style windmill. If you can get the last several seasons of the show (called "Bonderøven" or "Frank & Kastaniegaarden" in Danish) online you can see the building process even if it doesn't go into the nitty gritty of the design very much. I think it's roughly seasons 25 onwards. But I'm not sure if it's easily available online. Great show though, it's a bit like your CZcams channels!

Friction based heating using a wind turbine is something that's never crossed my mind! What an interesting use for windpower - some challenges involved with that, mainly how not to catch things on fire!

I have no wise words but if you build it I will watch.

Ooooooh! Better than the pedal car even! I am Dutch and it is hard not to love windmills if you like mechanical things and wood around here. I live close to windmills that are up to 400 years old and essentially unchanged and mostly preserved and functional. It may be a relatively big investment, but likely go pay for itself (but perhaps not in your lifetime...). One early remark: the slight angle of the sails is not because of the taper of the tower. In Dutch windmills, it's 13 degrees regardless of the tower's taper, because it is optimal for performance. Don't ask me why, but it is. The internal mechanics are usually made of wood, mostly. There are many different types of wood preferred for different parts. Some for flexibility, some for load bearing, some for wear resistance etc. But this is when a professional millmaker is building the best and most efficient windmill, to last centuries. I am sure a little oversizing here and there will allow using the relatively ordinary "building pine" as we call it in the Netherlands.

Yes.....this or more railways......or both😃

Something rather funny, just a few days ago on a Reddit channel I follow (either r/OffGrid or r/SolarDIY) somebody was asking about wooden windmills, and why they aren't "a thing". I had the GREAT pleasure in telling them that yes, wooden windmills do indeed exist and they have for centuries.

Is it the Sicilian windmills that use fertiliser sacks for sails. They are self limiting and can be easily replaced when they tear.

I didnt get why the top part needs to be angled to be parallel with the slope? Why cant the sails be extened a bit further out and be vertical? Btw. It looks wonderful Tim. Looking forward to watching you build it!!!

How about building the tower from large diameter concrete silo rings? Would be fast to erect and very steong to absorb vibration.

Wind powered train. 👍

Tim O. West, Windmillador.

I worked for a company that made a prototype wind turbine using sails in 2009 the company has since gone bust but i did think that the idea behind the turbine was good. It had three or four sails placed around a ring. Each rotation of the ring the sails were turned a half turn. This means that as they were coming into the wind they were side on and as they went with the wind they were face on. You could furl the sails in or out to adjust for wind speeds. Search tradewind turbines to find pictures and videos. The design allowed you to generate fairly high torques at low speeds and was ideal for pumping/grinding etc...

This feels like the fully fledged windmill could possibly be an EU funded project, maybe even with the help of some heritage NGOs if you have them... Although applying for such could be a bit of a hassle.

3:50 or just give it a longer shaft

Do you expect much noise from it? In case its close to the house for heating.

For a simple windmill design you can take a look at the Cretan windmill located at the test field of the WOT, a student association at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. It was build there in the 70s and still up and running. Building materials are almost entirely from wood, including the bearings! Only the rotor axle is steel and some screws and threaded rods to keep everything together. There is even a construction manual available for free (google cretan windmill WOT)

Excellent idea. Perhaps you might contact Robert Murray-Smith a fellow u-tube experimenter. He has looked a lot at all sorts of wind turbines. He would have leads/ designs to get the high torque you are after.

Dear inventor Tim. 👍👌👏 Great idea for a new project. Please kindly allow me to suggest something: Sir, how about using a used, sturdy differential (or even a complete axle), driveshafts and gearbox from a lorry for instance. The rotor/sails could be fastened to the brake drum (or, even better, to a disk brake). Car parts aren't sturdy enough, unfortunately Kris Harbour experienced this recently. You could even use the front axle of an all wheel drive truck/lorry. By using the steering gear box, you could bring the rotor to sit in different angles. The drive shaft(s) could be easily used as vertical power transmission. Maybe even with the rubber Hardy disc(s) and the bearing(s). It might be wise to build a smaller windmill with inexpensive used car parts first. With all those relatively easy available parts, almost every mechanical transmission/problem of a windmill can be made/solved. Even a necessary brake. Best regards, luck and health in particular.

By using L shaped steel flat rails you can use wheel barrows as your cars

Hi Tim how about using a differential from a car for the main bearing you just need to remove and seal one axle and then fix the blades on the weel hub and then the prop shaf can go down to the ground with a mirrored unit to transfer the power out parallel with the ground to run !!!

You could model it on the one in “ Oh Mr Porter “ that was an Irish windmill .

Tim, I regard you as an inventor. However, you are not really inventing anything here. You are just re-inventing the wheel, so to speak. In order to do something new I'd like to make a suggestion. I suggest you start with the study aerodynamics which is the relationship between gasses and solids. To be specific, airfoils. I'm not claiming to be an expert on airfoil dynamics but I always scored high on the subject during my piloting and aircraft mechanic days. From my point of view a good study in aerodynamics and airfoils before you pick up your tools of work (including a pad and pencil for making sketches). So please, open a book or browser and study. I believe you will really like it and it will do you much better when you are motivated to invent.

I was triggered by the picture of the 5 windmills, because they stand more or less in my backyard. Just Google “bouwtekening windmolen” upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Molen_Puurveense_molen_bouwtekening.jpg good luck!

Looks like this would be a very interesting project. Will be watching to see how this one develops. 👍

Need to add a break on the long wagon

Seems like it would be easier to make the drive wheel thick and long and counterweighted rather than try to make it angled and have the rotor flush against the tower surface. The fabrication challenges of that are relatively trivial considering availability of large steel pipes; Medieval Dutchmen would probably have used large steel pipes in place of mechanical complexity if they were available. What they had instead was heterogeneous, weak, high-friction, water-vulnerable lumber which expanded and contracted with moisture content.

If you were to pile up stones that high it might be worth designing in some cut outs near the top for pigeons or other rockbirds to nest in

I can't wait to watch how this is done.

I would love to see your approach to this build. I would be pleased to help make some parts for the project.

On the dutch wikipedia, the article on a Spinnenkopmolen nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinnenkopmolen is maybe close to what you're looking for.

Tim, note that the Dutch windmills didn't have a straight taper, but were curved. This allowed a more straight vertical sail, and horizontal main shaft. Their design was perfected over centuries. Good luck on building your own. Jon

My thought is that you don't need to tip the shaft, just stick a universal joint on it so the sails are tilted but the shaft is completely horizontal. Grab one out of a front wheel drive car, maybe?

3:06 windmill “De Valk” (“the Falcon”) in Leiden, the Netherlands

A bit of old advice. It dates from my grandfather in the 1920s or 30s. He was using gears to transfer power from a vertical to a horizontal shaft, but could not get it to run smoothly. He called an old millwright in who just counted the teeth on the gears and diagnosed the problem. The numbers of teeth on the two cogs had common factors so the same pairs of teeth made contact repeatedly, leading to rapid uneven wear. Choose cogs with different prime numbers of teeth so that each tooth will touch every other tooth. Have Fun!

How about two sets of counter-rotating blades connected through a salvaged rear differential? The weight would be better balanced on the tower and you wouldn't have to deal with an odd angle for power transmission.

"Where's the fun in that?". I LIKE you way of thinking. I would really like it if you design, build & implement your own vision of a windmill. I know you have the "engineering" capability to design it, the "mechanical" ability to get all the gearing built and the "carpentry" skills to build it. That only leaves financing & desire. I hope you are able to put it all into action as it would make a great video series.