Vintage Windmill and Wind Generator Forum

Nothing visible on the tail. A previous owner sprayed everything with an ugly silver paint. Didn't prep it well though so maybe I could get the silver paint off, and expose the lettering below.

I do have a picture of the tail though from the parts list I purchased. The plan is to hang my new tail metal on the wall in the living room, and project this on top of it. I'll be able to move the image on the wall from the computer and/or move the tail until they match up. I can stretch the image too if I need to to get things perfect. So no I don't have a stencil, but yes, I do have a plan.

my preference is to install the tail on my A702 in it's natural state.
vent holes and weathered.
Mike B
New Braunfels TX

I have an 8 foot DANDY tail that you can strain tea through. (buckshot)

Nothing else to kill I'll shoot a WINDMILL.

I've never understood people shooting at stuff like that. I work for a construction company that does work primarily in the water and waste water industry. We have had several emergency calls over the years to repair bullet holes in municipal water towers. Who's shooting water towers?!

If it wasn't for the ugly silver paint I'd probably have left my tail alone. Mike, that tail looks great. You can't duplicate years of patina. But you can ruin it with a coat of paint. I do still need to see if I can strip the silver off and actually see how the tail looks. Maybe I have a gem hidden underneath and the wrinkles and crinkles won't bother me so much. I just imagined it was just too much work to restore it, and it still be a rough, worn out, 70 year old piece of tin. I'll make this one a wall hanger in the garage and put the new one up on the mill. I met the guy up at the HVAC shop Saturday morning and we made a new tail. We parked in the lot at 10:00am, and were done and leaving at 10:32. It happened so quick I didn't get any photos of the process. It helps that he knew what he was doing, and we had the tools to do it with. 60" shear, and stacks of sheet metal to choose from. He didn't have a bead-roll machine, but we put a crimp in the edge that stiffened things up a lot. I think even more so than the original bead. He's got an 8-foot break and a roller as well. I have a couple of sails that need a little massaging. I may be back in his shop soon to work that out.

I also got my brake mechanism figured out, and about half fabricated. Ran out of time and energy over the weekend. But the hard part (the thinking) is done. Now it's just the doing.

it's always nice to have friends with skills & tools !

Yes it is! And in this case at least, I didn't even realize how easy it was going to be. I was planning on buying some light gauge steel off a coil at a local metal roofing company. Then I was going to lay it out and cut it, either with tin snips, or an angle grinder with a wafer disk. At best, I was hoping that he would have the ability to roll or break the edge for me to stiffen things up. Instead, I helped him grab a sheet of his metal, lay out the tail, sheer it to size, and feed it through the lock-form machine. I'll post pictures one of these days of the end product. The machine is really for forming corners of metal ductwork. It bends the edge of the sheet into a Z so that the corner is triple-thick. To make your corner you break a short 90 degree leg in your next side of duct and tuck it into that Z and then bend a leg of the Z over to capture the part you inserted. That probably makes no sense without a picture. So after a quick google search, it turns out the lock form joint we rolled was a "Pittsburgh Lock". So the edge of my new tail is shaped like figure B. That figure is a little exaggerated, my gaps are pretty tight. Anyway, it gives me a thicker, stronger edge than the original bead-rolled edge, and boy was it fast! Each side didn't take more than 2-3 seconds. Feed it in one side and it pops out the other side folded over. We had considered cross-breaking the tail. Putting it in the break and kissing it just enough to put a crease in it corner to corner. But the edges had things stiff enough that we decided it wasn't needed. It certainly opened my eyes to some possibilities. On this project for sure, but just in general. Sheet metal fabrication is one of those things I've never done anything with. More tools I never knew I wanted.

That is not correct.
It is not tools that I wanted.
It is tools I NEEDED !
that is what i tell my wife.
name withheld for she doesn't know who added this note.

Just like the days when I would take empty windmill cases to the auto machine shop and have them tanked, and blasted for 15 bucks, there is nothing wrong with spending a few well spent bucks on sheet metal work. Some things just ain't worth doing yourself.

I do some furnace replacements on the side and build a little duct work but only have a ten foot brake and a small stomp shear. It would be nice to have a lock form or Pittsburgh machine but most of the ones I have found in my price range are worn out.