A WindMill for Gusty Places


Introduction: A WindMill for Gusty Places

This is a down wind facing windmill which was designed to ride through wind events without having a trip out mechanism. It delivers power through a verticle shaft to be used more convienently closer to the ground

Step 1: Everything You Need to Know

Heres the full explanation on pdf. Here's the Flying Lizard in its service position. You can see the housing that holds the right angle drive, the sails, the caster and coupling the assembly rotates on. The driveshaft is inside the iron pipe going down to the load. This type of wind mill allows you to drive as large a generator, compressor or pump without having to hoist it up in the air.

Step 2: This Is the Windmill in Operation

By feathering its sails and furling in the wind due to the load applied on the output shaft., this windmill can successfully ride out gusty and turbulent wind events

Step 3: This Shows You How to Build the Top Assembly

Use your imagination just make sure that the right angle adapter is straight and secure and bolted down

Step 4: What the Adapter Housing Should Look Like

Use your imagination. Use the hole in the adapter handle to keep it in place in the housing , make sure the output shaft is centered going down.

Step 5: The Sail Assembly

An arrow is put in the bowstring by a groove called a "knock". Use the knock to secure the shaft to the hub with a bolt or screw

Step 6: This Is the Sail Assembly

The picture is a little fuzzy, but you can see the u nails holding down the sahfts. I used a little too much glue!

Step 7: Putting It All Together

You may need some help with this . Try for a calm day. I screwed the bootm studs to the post, then used them as a fulcrum to raise the windmill.

Step 8: The Modified Flying Lizard

Since the last edition the Flying Lizard has been changed to a five bladed rig with a welded steel hub. The shafts are fiberglass made from chimney sweeping rods. It wails in a thirty mph wind.



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    This reminds me of the wind mills (or are they water pumps) they have in some places on the Med. They use Fabric sails, and roll them around the shaft for different weather states.

    Has anyone tried hooking a SMALL air compressor pump to this unit? A friend (no longer with us) said that he had done this with a small compressor pump mounted on the prop platform of a windmill that he had built and had proved that he could pump up a tank to at least 90 psi in wind that was only 8 to 15 miles per hour and gusty! It would be nifty to build a small pump unit that could pressurize small tanks. When electricity is required each tank could be hooked to a compressed air generator (if such a thing exists). Generated electricity could then be stored in batteries or converted to 110 power for direct use in the house, shop, barn or whatever. I'm certainly no expert, but doing the windmill / generator / battery / converter thing costs so much money up front and is prone to serious maintenance costs and time because of less than top quality products that it isn't feasible for most of us! Excellent Instructible - thanks for something that is very useful and simple to build in order for a Luddite like me to be able to experiment with compressed air from wind power.


    I'm going to construct this wind mill, but I have a doubt, can I substitute the mill for this one?

    I'm goin to use the eletricity for only my computer, just to cut down the bill, I want just to turn the bill lower, so I think a small one is great for me. Do you think this one made of wood is useful acording to the rest of te structure?

    Thank you.

    Just curios..what happens when wind mill changes the direction according to the wind direction, does the wires that carry electricity generated from wind get damaged? how do you control that?

    1 reply

    Because the generator is on the bottom, nothing gets twisted.

    Good work, Cowboywindmillbuilder, congratulations. When I was a child (1944 - 1950) we lived in the campaign, without 'normal' electricity. My father had built with its own hands a windmill generator of 12 volts that functioned admirably. He used a dynamo of car, and the propeller was of two spades (blades), of wood, carved by hand. The device had a automatic security brake, to avoid that a too strong wind to destroy it. Two or three large truck batteries permitted us to have lights in all the rooms and to listen the radio (the transistors not existed) although did not blow the wind during some days.

    Great instructable; clear, concise directions! But I do have a few questions: What kind of lubrication needs does this have (what points, how often, best lube to use)? Which faces into the prevailing wind direction: the sails side, or the right-angle drive side? What would you connect to this windmill to charge a battery, and how would you connect it?

    4 replies

    The outer bushing where the shaft rides can use a little grease occassionally. The threads of the flange where housing rotates needs oil or grease to keep it limber, there's very little rust where I live in Nevada, because rainfall is scarce. Keep that in mind. As far as a generator, I would recommend some type of gearing up, or a overdriving pulley before its hooked up to a generator. I have designed this device for an application I will reveal later, a wind driven heat pump.

    Go get 'em CBWMB! A wind driven heat pump absolutely rocks! Smashing idea! I was in Las V a while back, and it was interesting to see how all the houses had their AC units roof mounted, "to keep the sand/dust from filling them up" I was told. Shades of "Dune": desert-rigged in Lost Wages! Finally started documenting my portable windmill project (which was inspired by your Instructable) on my blog. I'll migrate it here when I've finished hooking up the generator part.

    This looks like a downwind type windmill, with the prop at the downwind side of the mast. Downwinders lose just a bit of power from the turbulence caused by the mast, but are better able to "self-feather" by the flexing of the blades, since they won't be colliding with the mast. I like them a lot.

    Because the pipe support has such a small cross section area and is round, I haven't seen much effect from turbulence as the sails pass in back of it.

    Nice instructable. I was thinking about making one out of recycling aluminum cans. Might use this design, seems cheap enough. Will give credit where credit is due.

    This is an interesting approach to small wind!