Vintage Windmill and Wind Generator Forum

Here's an update on my project: Got the tower and mill up. I dug the holes 4 ft deep for the legs. With those 24 inch steel disks welded to the bottom of the legs, I don't believe it's going anywhere. I built and erected a gin pole using Ken O'Brock's basic design. It held up fine and I was able to lift mill, tail vane, and wheel all together to the top of the tower and sit it into position. For now, it's not doing any work. Just spinning in the wind and providing me and my wife endless joy and satisfaction.

Great!

Looks beautiful - great restoration, and a beautiful location. Congratulations!

Thank you folks! It was a lot of work, but something to feel good about.

Glen,
Welcome aboard, great job on windmill. I would love to see some close up pics of ur gin pole and any specs on building one you may have. Thanks

Jerry

Hello Jerry
My pole is constructed from 2 inch iron pipe using Ken O'Brock's basic design. Do a search for his windmills and you'll find his site. Take a look at "Photos 2". You'll see on that page his gin pole with some dimensions.
Important from my perspective is getting it attached to the tower in a secure manner. I used a threaded floor mount. I also used two other attach points/braces; one near the tower cap and the other about midway down to the floor mount. These attach braces must be custom made to fit your application. This was the first and only time I've done this so I'm obviously inexperienced at it. Ken has a lifetime of doing it, so has learned a great deal. My pole was about 10 ft high. The height was determined by how high I would have to lift the mill to allow the mast pipe to clear the tower cap.

Ken uses some type of hand crank winch on his. Looks like a boat trailer winch. I used an electric winch on mine. There's a discussion on Gin Poles elsewhere on this forum. Ken posted there about his gin pole experience.

Good job thanks for photos

Here's the gin pole base attach point. It's threaded, so the gin pole screws into this base plate. The hard part is just getting the whole thing up to the work platform. I believe this fact alone discourages many folks from trying to lift mills with gin poles.

Yes you are right about getting it up there. I have a Gin pole the time I have used it was on the ground to put an Axtell Ever-oil bonnet on while mill was setting in my work stubb. Bonnet weighs 25lbs. I've decided when I put the Axtell back up I'm going to get someone to make me a regular galvanized bonnet.

Wayne, you might think twice about that. Axtell tops are made to support the guide rod. That's why they are cast with a slot, to give support.