Vintage Windmill and Wind Generator Forum

Does anyone have construction plans for a wood tower? 30-32' for 8.5' Eclipse.

In a back issue of Windmiller's Gazette they showed how to make a wood tower for an Eclipse. Don't remember the issue will look this afternoon and get the number, you can order back issue's

Towers seem to very much by region, here, most were Dug Fir legs, they sheathed them about a third of the way down and then put four kickers in the long extended legs to bow them all out equally. This strengthened the tower by giving the legs arches like the Eifel Tower. This worked great on old growth straight grain Dug Fir but if you buy Home Depot 4x4s the knots and weird blemishes in the wood will cause it to not bow out equally and you will be cutting different length boards plus come alongs and also blocks and jacks to get everything where you want before sheathing. Its not that hard and well worth your time but the modern pressure treated 4x4s are just kind of junk, they are green in the middle, don't hold paint or hold nails or screws and sometimes will not even last as long as a good set of dipped Cypress sections. If you can find better wood than the big box store its worth whatever it takes to get it, one time I found some beautiful Dug Fir 4x6s that had been some kind of skids Boeing Wichita got in. There is still good wood around but you got to go look for it. Good Luck!

I found the plans for Eclipse towers. Thanks

Get you some good wood drill bits and a good drill. Good Luck. I'm trying to replace a 4X6 leg on a tower I built, a few years back.

Do you guys have a saw mill near by. The one near me has hemlock, cedar, maple,red and white oak and milled to various sizes.All the wood in my barn i built is rough cut even the 4 by 6 beams. Just a thought for the towers.

No trees here, NO sawmill near by

Douglas fir is readily available in the western Rockies. We are building 5 towers from it now. We get full length corner beams custom cut with no splicing.

You will have a hard time finding plans specific to what you are wanting. We do a lot of custom towers in different heights, stubs and spreads. It works the best to da a layout on concrete floor, snap chalk lines and take measurements. I personally like widespread towers (9 degrees) versus standard (6 degrees). Widespread are as stable as Aaron's sprung leg style but easier to build. Taking measurements from our chalk lines, we precut all the girts and girts are wrapped on the corners. X braces are laid on loose and marked for cutting as they dont work well to precut from a plan. We build the first side flat and when done, flip the first side down and build the second side flat on top of the first. After second side is done,it is blocked at top the right spacing and hinged up at the bottom with the forklift, loader or crane. Top and bottom are easy enough to square when building flat but the sides not as easy. You can use a come a long or ratchet straps to pull the sides square. The regular type ladders are time consuming so we ladder a whole side with girts.




We have a 25' widespread with 4' stub for 8' that is two X braces a side that we can cruise thru quick. With the 4' stub assembled, the 20' wood portion takes two of us 6.5 hours.

Ron Stauffer
Montrose CO

Widespread versus standard. The final version widespread we build now has a 4' metal stub kinked like the top 7 of widespread 21 Aer tower pictured. The latest version has wood the whole way up to the platform. It is a 25' for 8' mills


Custom 10 x 33 wide


Ron Stauffer
Montrose CO

VERY nice work Ron , thank you for the photos & indepth explanation , you make it sound simple & easy to do ( which it is not )
Thanks
Mike B