Vintage Windmill and Wind Generator Forum

This is my vertical axis wind turbine that I picked up from some folks that were clearing off an old homestead. Obviously shop built. It has a large belt pulley mounted at the bottom of the drum and on the frame near the pulley is a mount where most likely a generator was mounted and lined up with the large pulley. It still has some kind of a small voltage regulator mounted on the frame near where the generator would have been mounted. Each layer of the drum is like an "s" shape laying on its side so it catches wind on one side of the bucket or the other. Its fairly tall, about 8 or 9 feet. The frame that the drum is mounted on is built to tilt down on the base like an Aermotor tilting tower(I dont see where that would be useful here, but it is kinda nifty!) It's one of my many "when I get around to it" projects. It needs bearings, eventually im going to do that and put it up near my house so I can watch it spin on breezy days!

Thanks for sharing! That's something you don't see everyday. Curious as to the gauge of the drum? ....and whether this was a practical design. Would take a stiff breeze to turn a generator under load with that drive.

Pretty neat find. It's a Savonius rotor.