Rare Windmill Gets New Life
Found trampled in a field, rare 12-foot windmill is restored and becomes a permanent fixture at a South Dakota museum
 |
The Aermotor on its first morning after installation, catching early morning light for the first time in years. “To get this shot, I took several as the sun came up, standing on a tall stepladder in the back of my pickup,” Jim Lacey notes, “so as to get fairly close, and on nearly the same plane as the windmill.”
Jim Lacey
|
Our latest find is far off the beaten path: a rare Aermotor Co. “power” windmill found trampled in a pasture.
Last summer, we were hired to locate a site for an irrigation well northeast of South Shore, S.D. This is some rather grim country, sort of a poor soil, hard-scrabble area. My wife, Joan, agreed to go along and witch for the best place to dig test holes, so she went ahead and I followed in the big truck. We went up a narrow, two-lane gravel road that turned into a one-lane dirt road and then a field approach before finally ending in a horse pasture.
RELATED CONTENT
The hilltop house has come to be known as the Dempster House....
Familiar forms from farm and field...
Catch, Restore and Release...
Reel can be used on either side of planter...
Find of the Month: could be interesting old gas engines or vintage farm equipment. Expect plenty of...
We drilled test holes, located a couple well sites and were leaving when Joan returned, telling me to look at a windmill she’d spotted buried in the grass. Not much was visible, but we could tell it was open-geared, meaning it was old. We made a deal with the property owner and returned the next day to retrieve the windmill. This all took place 100-odd miles from home, so we were lucky to find a neighboring farmer with a loader to lift the mill after we dug it out and set it on our trailer. After it was loaded, we could see the bevel gearing and then figured out it was a “power” mill, 12 feet in diameter, built by Aermotor Co., Chicago. But that’s about all we knew about it.
When you need advice, it’s best to go to a good advisor. In this case, we turned to T. Lindsey Baker, who wrote the Field Guide to American Windmills. Paging through my copy that night, I found mention of the power mill, mostly in passing. It appeared that, at least in 1985 when the book was written, power mills were considered rare. I wrote Baker, telling him of our good luck. He responded with a copy of a sales brochure on this mill, a 1900 Model Power Aermotor.
A 12-foot fan produces very little power at low wind conditions, only making 0.2 hp when working a 10 mph breeze. With more wind, it gets better, slowly; at 25 mph, the mill will generate 3.12 hp. However, if you get winds of 35 mph, and can keep the mill loaded, it can generate 8 hp. One wonders how the 3/4-inch shaft coming down from 50 feet or so can handle that much power. As a safety feature, a slip clutch was located at the bottom of the downshaft, above whatever was being driven, so if something stuck, one would not have to climb “upstairs” in the middle of winter to take the mill apart.