Vintage Windmill and Wind Generator Forum

Hey everyone, I am always seeing different techniques of raising/lowering mills and the ingenuity and sometimes redneck ingenuity behind the different techniques always enthuses me. I have seen everything from homemade rigs for Tractors, Gin Poles , Cranes, Buckets, pulling them up with trucks and one modified tow truck i think it was that tilted the whole tower. Anyways the purpose of this post is for everyone to share stories and pictures of all the different methods that have been done over the years. Excited to hear/ see all the different methods. Josh

Used a big forklift to raise mine. Chained the tower to forks and drove into the tower while lifting the forks.neighbor had forklift and convinced me it would work . Worked better than expected

I have used hinged anchors on my towers. I've used 3 different methods to pull my tower and mill assys to vertical.

(1) block and tackle w/ A-frame, truck as fixed anchor, and sub-compact tractor to pull (20' Woodmanse tower and 8' Dempster 12)
(2) a large tractor with bucket raised to full height (20' challenge tower and Aermotor X702)
(3) Boom truck (37' Aermotor tower and Aermotor B702)

The common denominator for each of these is the hinged anchors. Works for me.

Pics cont..........

Very cool Paul! That seems to be the easiest way i can think of also.

A pump hoist does it for me. Here Im installing just the mill, but if I do a complete, I usually raise the tower first ,get it set and secure then install the mill onto the tower.

Raisng my 10 FT Eclipse. Using a hinge frame I had seen at Spearmen

PaulV,

What is the maximum height of a tower you would use hinges on? Thanks

Jerry

Jerry-
I used the hinges on a 37' tower w/ 10' Aermotor. Came up without complaint, and no worries on my end. Pretty stout hinges.

In 20 years, I have used all methods from gin to hinge to loader tractor stinger to pump truck to crane. My preference is pump truck or crane. Hinging has limitations. I bought a D602 on a 40' trussed tripod tower last week that a guy tried to hinge down and dropped. There is a lot of pressure when it get close to horizontal. You can see the damage it did. Roger F had one go down hinging it. Early in my career (pre pump truck), I hinged down an 8 x 35 that slid the truck with brakes locked. The 12, 14 and 16s we did on the rez with tilt up were a pain to lay down as you had to have the boom straight up or the weight would pick up the front end of the truck. You had to use another truck to pull them off center and hold them back when setting. With a pump truck, I set or lower mill and tower together by picking up at the balance point in the horizontal position with a slight weight advantage to the tower bottom. This way you are picking straight up and there is no side pressure. The bottom of the tower swings naturally in position with the slight weight advantage to the bottom. I find this to be the safest.

I encountered an issue last week for the first time with this method. I had raised an 8 x 27 on a new install and was attaching the anchors. I had 2 anchors attached and was going for the third. I laid down the truck remote and the customer decided he would help by moving the bolt bins and tools to the next anchor. He accidently stepped on the remote engaging the "down" button and the fast idle. Thankfully when the tower made a big lurch, he jumped off the remote. Anything can and will happen.

Ron Stauffer
Montrose CO