Vintage Windmill and Wind Generator Forum

Well, after a long and hard build the 20' Samson is finally up at the museum.

Lots of lessons learned in the process. For example, every single blade had 2 to 7 stress cracks that had to be drilled and welded up. The sheet thickness varied by almost 40% so we initially ground off the galvanizing but found that thinned the already thin sheets too much, making burn-through during welding all too common. What we ended up doing is stripping the zinc around the cracks with muriatic acid on both sides of the sheet and that made welding go a LOT easier.

Anyway..a photo. Man-door gives a bit of size reference. Tower is about 13 feet tall. We've got to put in some sort of guarding so people don't whack their heads on the blades but wanted the unit low enough for people to be able to actually see it. Pondering a railing or similar for that.

We thought the tail was huge...but now that the blades are in place, it looks tiny.

Wow that's awesome!

Like Joe Kenda says, "well, my my my". Awesome.

Wow

Nice

Looks great.

Great Job! Kozzy send me some info how I can contact the museum come Sept. I'm coming out that way and want to come see in person.

What a great job. You and your follow volunteers should be very proud.
Thanks for saving and displaying a great part of America history.

We got our open geared Samson windmill up in 2018. Took it down and put it back up where it had been for over 100 years. Lot of replacements we had to do. But the brake cable recently broke into. I do not remember how brake, tail are connected at the head. A local person helped restore it and he has moved on. Can anyone give me directions on hooking up the brake cable. i presume it would be best to use braid wire cable for this? Thanks for any help. Ralph