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Forum Index : Windmills : Blade mounts for my old F&P Wind Genny

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Bryan1

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Joined: 22/02/2006
Location: Australia
Posts: 1344

Posted: 09:34am 08 May 2020

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G'day Guy's,
Well now in 15 years I have lost blades on my homemade wind turbines, that 3 metre blade set I made for my 2hp motor conversion finally gave up after 7 years. So for an easy fix I put my old F&P wind genny up the one I had up years ago when Gordon came up for a look at the mod I did for caps. I made a 2.5metre set and they lasted a good 5 years then I slapped a crude blade out pine and used wood screws to hold it together.

Well that lasted 3 years and with that last fail I still need to take that blade of the shed roof as it lets water in. So no more wood screws to hold blades together.

So yesterday when I had my 16hp listeriod charging my shed battery decided to get the 5" grinder out and cut some new mounts. Now how to quickly brought the old farts brain back in gear. Got out the compass and soon marked it out. Cut the first one to my marking out then just traced the second one with some boilies chalk and cut it out. Now to balance the 2 plates I setup 4 bricks and some C section for a balance jig. I drilled a hole in the plates to suit a 12mm x 60mm bolt and with a nut on each side it left enough to meet the knife edge and after a few hours got it so back with the compass to mark out the holes.

Now being on the farm I needed 9 off bolts to put this together but no luck looking for bolts so thought about using all thread now I knew I had a heap of 10mm threaded bar here but I only found 13 m10 nuts where in 12mm I found a heap of nylock nuts. Thinking back I did score some threaded rod rod when I did that job at target and sure enough M12 SS threaded rod.

So that was the target size hole so and I found my old trusty 12mm drill so gave it a tickle in the grinder and drilled the 9 holes in my mill.

Set up the blades in the front of shed ( there was enough room) and when I got them close to 60 degrees, well within 10mm on the diagonal drilled the first hole and after drilling all 9 holes and bolting it together the blade started coming to life.

Now to set it for balancing the vice wasn't high enough so decided to jerry rig 2 off 75mm C-section and found it just wasn't high enough. Now I did have a few more mill with my welder clamp and found that wasn't enough, so duly found some 25mm offcut and that did the trick the blades can now be balanced.

Well on balancing ther is one heavy blade so in the morning time to make some weights and cut longer studs should get this balanced. My daughter wants to paint the blades so thats the tomorrows job and this blade set can be back in the air charging my shed battery which is a 24 volt 735amp/hour forklift battery. I got this battery 5 years ago and it has served me in my shed since.

Now on making new ovens for this wood stove I pulled out of an old post office and founs a 1898 penny in it. The batteries took a hit but provided the power.

When this ready to raise in the air I'll take a pic and put it on here.

Cheers Bryan

brucedownunder2
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Joined: 14/09/2005
Location: Australia
Posts: 1548

Posted: 01:18am 09 May 2020

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Hi Bryan .

Good to see you back bashing wood again !!.

I've been wanting someone's unfinished windmill project ,but no takers ,so far -sort of want to hang something up on the tower to look at -- I'm sort of finished in the "building" section ,nowadays !.

Nice to hear of your project ,reminds me of yesteryear ...

Will be watching for your final outcome.

Bruce

Bushboy

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