Vintage Windmill and Wind Generator Forum

Hello All,
I started out with my great grandfathers 8 ft Ball Bearing Clipper. I am told it was the kind that needed oiled each day of use and in 1959, a year prior to my birth at the age of 82 he was up there oiling it to water cattle, when he fell, suffered internal injuries, crawled to his tractor, drove to the road flagged someone down and passed away the next day from his injuries.
5 years ago I inherited the mill and its various accessories, not wanting to suffer the same fate, I salvaged the fin and made it look new and adapted it to a 8 ft Aermotor and now it sits out in a pasture at the water tank by our pens as a reminder of my family heritage and history in agriculture.
However I still have the fan in my shop since I could not figure a way to mount it to the Aermotor 702 gear head. So I am thinking ceiling fan for the barn.
It has a 1 1/8th size shaft about 16 inches long to tie on to. I have trouble finding an AC motor slow enough to make either a belt drive or direct drive unit out of it.
Have any of you tackled such a project and have any suggestions? Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you in advance for your response.

The info is out there. There are some ready to hang listed on the internet. Have you looked into a variable speed motor?

If you went with belt reduction, a fractional HP 3 phase motor on a VFD would get you the rest of the way. Would have to figure out what reduction you could get to, then see where you'd have to run the Hz on the VFD (you wouldn't want it too low continuously).

I made a ceiling fan out of a 10 ft. wood wheel Monitor shaft,hub.
I started with a 1 hp. single ph 1725 RPM motor. I had a 40 to 1 gear reduction that bolted to the "C" face motor. I got the gear reduction from a auction someplace. For not many dollars.
From there I got on the internet and found a web site that you put the RPM of the drive pulley to see what size of a driven pulley you would need to get the RPM you need. I think the drive pulley is about a 3" and the driven pulley is about 12 or 14'' that gets the fan down to about 9 or 10 RPM.
With out the gear reduction you could also use a Jack shaft to got the RPM down where you need it.
I had the shaft machined to a common size and got 2 pillow block bearings. I mounted the bearings and motor, gear box to the frame. I built a frame out of some 1/8 inch 2X2 square tubing that fit over 2 / 20 ft long 2X8". These fit over 3 rafters in my shop.
I set the motor up with a switch that I can run the fan in 2 directions (Summer, Winter) just like the fan in the house. DO NOT flip this switch with the power on and the fan motor powered up. If you do that it will make some bad noises.
I had the belt off of the pulleys when it was hot in the shop with a fan blowing up there from the floor. When I was working on it and got down for something when I looked up the wheel was spinning. Not much drag on it to do that.
Even if it don't move a lot of air it is a good talking point and fun to just sit and watch.
I have a windmill friend that made one and put it in his shop. That is what got my wheels turning. (windmill wheels turning). This was a years long project from start to finish.
Terry

Motor and gear box. Half of the wheel up.

All up and ready to spin.

That's really neat, Terry. Great description, thank you.

Wow! Great job Terry. Thanks for the info. I'm sure everyone that was there remembers the ceiling fans in the barn/play house we went to when we were at El Dorado.

Very nice!

Thanks every one.
It was a fun project. Made the old brain work getting everything to work the way I wanted it to. I wanted to work all of the bugs worked out before it went in the rafters.
Terry