Vintage Windmill and Wind Generator Forum

Greetings from South Carolina

The other day I picked up the remnants of what I think is a '36 or '38 Wincharger at Kline's Antiques east of Harrisburg NC. The price was right. The head is fairly complete with generator (stuck), blade flange, main housing with pivot, tail arm (less vanes) with spring and the closing chain. The tail arm and spring will let the blade swing out of the wind when it gets to strong. Does anyone out there have any info on this thing? As you can see the blade is not there. I might have to get a piece of spruce and a draw knife.
Best Regards

It is a model 36. There’s part diagrams at Wincharger.com under resources and other sales literature under advertising. Depending on what all you need I may have parts or you can occasionally find parts on eBay. My contact info in on the Wincharger website under resources/part suppliers. Nice find, looks like an early one and rare to find them in SC.

Mike,

I ordered one of your manuals for the Model 36 and am looking forward to getting into the machine.

I tilted after windmills for a few years in late 70s and early 80s. I worked with a couple of fellows, Glenn Dyer and Roland Coulson, now passed on. Glenn was a fine gentleman, very intelligent, self taught and would be been a fine mechanical engineer but for lack of money growing up in the depression. Glenn built some mean Model T racing engine and was quite knowledgeable about wind generators. Roland was a gung-ho, getter done sort of guy. As I recall, he did some covert military work in his early years. He learned about altitude density and gravity while flying his Cessna 140 back in 1984.

Roland had acquired the Wincharger blade cutting machines somewhere along the line and tried scaling the blades up to a larger diameter. That has some issues of its own. I remember both the Zephyr generator and the Coulson wind machine pictured in the Alternative Energy Magazine articles attached. Those were interesting days.

Best Regards

I’ve heard of both of those guys, both are wind electric legends. I have the Long Live Old Wincos” article on the Wincharger website. It’s a great article full of useful info. Heard some pretty amazing stories about Coulson…..guns, hand grenadines and hunting down Arkansas hippies that stole machines from him. WisJim posted a couple Coulson pics a while back.
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I put you manual in the mail this morning. Let me know if you need more info.

Nice to see someone else who knew Roland on this site.