Two reasonable days at the ranch

I worked some more on the wind turbine this last couple of days. One day I grabbed my welder and the steel I'd located the other day. 20 minutes or so later and indeed it felt like 20 minutes, I had the base and upright of the turbine stand together.

The center is indeed an old wheel rim. Since I used 6011 welding rod which doesn't care whether steel is rusty or not, I could weld with zero preparation. I like this very much.

Roll on a few days to today. I worked on the rotor arms and cut up a plastic paint bucket to be my turbine blades.

Initial tests, holding the blades up using gravity to hold them to the turbine were not promising. There was wind but while I could feel a gentle breeze, it was not enough to turn the blades. 

I have very much a feeling that this wind turbine experiment might be doomed because of the wind situation here. I very rarely notice any wind. This has to be the calmest most wind free place I've ever lived.

The goal for tomorrow is to put the turbine mount on top of the pole. I spent a while hunting for a suitable piece of steel to act as the turbine mount before finding something in my scrap pile. That had a piece of angle welded to it that I'll remove tomorrow before cutting the supports that go between the post and the new mount.

I had all sorts of fun drilling mounting holes in the mount for the turbine including getting metal splinters in my fingers. I looked at the mounting holes on the turbine itself and they are threaded but not to M4. They're plastic and it looks like they're threaded for a woodscrew.  I'll just pass a bolt straight through. As I have M3 bolts, I'll use them to fasten the two together. Perhaps even some number 8 bolts. 

Since this generator seems to be largely made of plastic where it should be metal, I do not envisage a long life for it. In fact I'll be surprised if it doesn't fall apart before it even gets any wind sufficient to turn the blades. This is largely why I didn't attempt before to use the thing, The only reason I'm spending time on it now (aside from it potentially being useful) is because due to the Covid-19 shutdown of everything, I have plenty time.

Normally at this time of the school year I'm out driving schoolbusses from 5:30AM  until 5PM daily, with little gaps and breaks. This year I've been out for 3 hours 2-3 times a week, delivering food to children in need with the work bus. That's getting cut back now to probably a day every other week then eventually it'll be likely to be a day a month and then it'll probably be phased out. So I've got plenty free time. Thus I can devote some to things that probably won't work just in case they actually do.