Vintage Windmill and Wind Generator Forum

Thank you

Worked on a few things.

The bottom for main casting had some wear on one side from the ball bearings.

Cleaned up the main casting where the lower shaft bearings go. Cut the lower bronze oil-lite bearings. It is my understanding these mills came in three types of bearings over the evolution of this mill: Babbitt, bronze graphite and roller bearings. I’m trying to upgrade from Babbitt for the shaft bearings. The three upper main shaft bearings are in great shape. Two of the three lower bearings were worn plum out.

Nice job Micheal !

nice work , well thought out .

Hey cool! How did you do that? I'm gonna have to make bearings for mine too they are toast

Some progress…

Oil lite bearings for the top bearing housings are cut. Cut leather shims. Planning on soaking the shims in oil.

Copper pipe end caps for the small oil wick reservoirs.

I need to make a stub tower for it to start putting it back together. I reassembled my Baker Monitor X on my usual shop stub.

Looking good Micheal !

Michael
Where did you find bearings? How did you cut them in half nicely.

Mike Hage wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 6:27 am Michael
Where did you find bearings? How did you cut them in half nicely.

McMaster-Carr. Three inches is the longest I could find. I looked for graphite bearings as well in my search, without any luck. The 1 5/8” housing of the Butler made the search harder as most conventional 1.25” shafts (bearings) possessed a 1.75” OD.

I measured several times, marked, measured a few more times and then started with a manual hacksaw. Once I got a good start, I used a sawzall with a fine blade for metal and a vice. While I have a portable bandsaw, a mounted bandsaw would likely work much better. At the end, I hit them on a belt sander a little to pretty up the cuts. My cuts would not pass a NASA quality control check, but they will work on an old windmill.

Made some oil cup covers for the Double Gear. I was able to make three of them out of a 4” x 8” x .064” copper sheet. The copper is fairly thick and I made them to where I can adjust the tightness with a few taps of a hammer or a slight squeeze in a vise.

Since replacing the main Babbitt bearings with oil impregnated bearings, I really will not need to remove the oil caps for the main bearings. However if I’m up on the tower at some point in the future, I might squirt something lubricant-wise down the wick hole.

I ended up soaking the leather bearing shims in oil. Should get a good number of years out of them. The original leather shims appeared near petrified.

I made a stub tower and started to partially reassemble it. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless.