Vintage Windmill and Wind Generator Forum

You missed one little thing I said...

. It goes in from the front, and comes out through the front. The race is rusted to the rollers, and the rollers are rusted to the inner race, and the inner race is rusted to the shaft. So as of now the whole thing is one rusty mass. You will need to cut through the balls, and outer race ( maybe on 2 places) and that mess should start falling out.

The bearing and race and round spacer come out thru the front. I will send you a PM.

All you folks following, the matter is solved. I'm sure, upon re-assembly, he will make reports on the progress.

This mill project is horribly almost impossible. If I would not have worked on many , many of these, I would not have even started with him. However, I have a lot of experience with these things, rusted tight, or not.. I did load him up with too much info, I apologize for that. Should have only done one post at a time. It's an understandable error, but I will offer him a free 8 ft # 12 case regardless.

Bill will now have Dempsteritis

Well, since I didn't follow directions and if I can't weld the crack, I'll have to abort the mission. Thanks for all your help.

Woah Bill your abandoned ship to early. I believe Windy Bob is willing to GIVE you a new housing which I think was pretty nice !!

Bill I sent you a private message. Dan is right. Take some time off, make a run down here, and a case is yours.

I've busted several cases. It happens. You have to lick your wounds and press on.

Dempster 12 was my first mill. If you can get to the finish line with it, you'll be glad you persisted. All future mills will seem easy going forward.

I’ve broken a good number of parts as a hobbyist working on windmills. It unfortunately happens. I judge things a little different now, in that I’ve been injured while working on a windmill through poor decisions and bad luck a few years back. A cracked part will still aggravate me, but surgeries (plural) because of my bad luck and poor decisions aggravate me much worse.

When I look at a windmill project, I often subconsciously go back to my youth when I piddled in model rockets and those small plastic kit cars that you have to glue together. Both model rockets and those kit cars had different skill levels of beginner, intermediate, advanced and expert. To me, once you tackle a frozen up Dempster, you’re on that righthand side of that skill level scale.

I've always thought that once you understand the design and operation of Dempster mills, you can work over almost any of them. I have mentioned that before.

I agree with all of the above sentiments!
My Dempster #12 , 8ft version was fifth windmill I have saved from the scrappers, and yes it was a “challenge “
but the return is well worth the effort!
These windmills are beautiful to watch and listen to .
No regrets
And the people you meet along the way are the best