Line Boring Windmill Head

[JBarker]

Very interesting video on YouTube...

[windybob]

Appears to be a Stover Model M. They have no bearings, the shaft rides on cast. The Windmill Bible says the model M has "plain" bearings. They are very quick to freeze up when left outside, unserviced. Putting brass in them is fine I suppose. Lot of work doing that. For a mass-produced, lower cost mill, cast iron bearings were fine for the day. Stover is not the only one to do steel-on-cast. Ask Heller-Aller about that.

[LoTec]

Ingenious Rube Goldberg DIY line boring set-up. Hopefully more precise than what a friend of mine did, years ago. He tried to bore out the hub bearing on an Aermotor A612 and put in bronze bushings. He did it with a hand held drill, which apparently wandered a bit. It wound up that the shaft did not line up with the back bearing. He had to move that over somehow, then had to grind the teeth down on the rear pinion gear and bull gear to get them to mesh. What a mess. It would have been exponentially simpler just to pour babbitt.

[LoTec]

Ingenious Rube Goldberg DIY line boring set-up. Hopefully more precise than what a friend of mine did, years ago. He tried to bore out the hub bearing on an Aermotor A612 and put in bronze bushings. He did it with a hand held drill, which apparently wandered a bit. It wound up that the shaft did not line up with the back bearing. He had to move that over somehow, then had to grind the teeth down on the rear pinion gear and bull gear to get them to mesh. What a mess. It would have been exponentially simpler just to pour babbitt.