Low-tech Windmills Making a Comeback

Brilliant....

I used to work with an old guy who went around studying windmills...he showed me how the would attach steel axles to a long wooden roller... I'd assumed the steel went all the way through..but they are cunning L shaped stub axles set into a groove at each end secured with a block of wood and an iron hoop shrunk on....cunning eh?

There are loads of working watermills in UK grinding flour...I've picked up wheat from the field after harvest and ground it in a coffee grinder and let the kids make soda bread when they were young.

(picked Black berries and windfall apples yesterday evening...just put a couple of Blackberry and apple pies in the oven .. I'll post a slice for you to taste when they come out!)

Del

Hi Del, yes I agree with this idea it is brilliant and so envoronmentaly clean. When I worked in Holland I used to watch some of their windmills working, there were two in the middle of Rotterdam used for shredding tobacco, then just another two kilometers down the road from them there was a windmill grinding all sorts of spices. Of course most of the dutch windmills are used for pumping water, some of them are 400 years old and still going strong. I remember discussing with my then boss about how windmills would save a lot of electricity in the milling of grain and such in England. It was great to read this post, and it also displayed another use for windmills other than producing electricity. Spencer.

Windmills (pumps) dotted the Texas landscape all my early years. We used to play a game who could count the most (or oil rigs) on those ever so long family outings through the Texas countryside.

Now they are more than sparse in comparison to those days.

I absolutely love the revival movement.

cr3