Tilting at Windmills

(With apologies to Miguel Cervantes [and Gordon Lightfoot])

This is the tale of my own Quest to construct some central European windmills, for use in my Ligny games at Historicon next month, and beyond. I got the first materials (and inspiration) for this project back the beginning of April, as I detailed in a post then - 1/4" thick foamboard, 7/8" round wood dowel. I already had a bunch of Craft sticks (Popsicle sticks) which I planned to use to make the "boards" of the windmill.

Some googling turned up a great site about windmills and their preservation from Estonia. This type of mill is a Post mill, and was common well into the 20th century. The earlier blog post I cited in April was also a major inspiration and partial guide. 

I laid out the plans for the main building of the windmill on stiff card. I decided on the main frame being 120 x 60mm. This proved to be rather large, so a second was constructed only 90 x 60mm.  

I cut the card out to make templates for the windmill construction. Those parts were then traced out onto the foam board, and cut out with an Xacto knife. 

My first try I went for a corner/angle construction, figuring it would be stronger and hold square better. I allowed for the thickness of the foam board properly with the base...

but forgot that it would skew the eaves of the roof unacceptably.

The pieces were held together with white glue and pins.  After this quick trial assembly I decided that the skew was too great (I might reuse the structure for something else), 

and re- did it with the pieces all squared off symmetrically, and at the same time did the second, shorter version as well. 

A standard home drill was used to make a 3/8" hole for the windshaft - I use the drill to also partially drill through the opposite side panel to make a place for the 3/8" dowel to seat as well. 

At this point, it became clear I needed some additional pieces, so back to Michael's (with 40% off coupon - they have amazing online coupons all the time) and the local hardware store for some 3/8" Fender washers, 3/8" hardwood dowel, and some assorted Balsa pieces. 

Also some 6" x 6" clear pine from Michael's to use as the base for the Windmills

. 

Windmill buildings, with test positioning of the 3/8" dowel and washer.

The 7/8' dowel was sawed off (rather crudely using a saber saw and vice) at 60mm, sanded, and mounted in the center of the base board with epoxy. This will form the "post" of the that the postmill will sit upon. 

The Craft sticks were cut into 60 and 30mm lengths and glued on "bricklay" pattern, plus some custom cut pieces for the eaves. I used wire cutting pliers to to this cutting, which worked very well. Door is thin balsa wood, and the door frame and window frames were added with more craft stick wood.

View showing the windshafts added. 

Dilute white (PVA) glue was brushed all over the project after it had dried for added strength. 

The supports for the post were added to the bases using the 1/2" balsa (cut with saber saw), and glued on with epoxy. I did this with 45 degree cuts.

 Here I made an error by not ensuring the foot print of the supports would be inside the footprint of the shed's base. Oh well, too late now! The sheds were epoxied to the post and supports. 

Prior to assembly, everything was sprayed with black primer, followed by Walmart economy black spray paint. (Walmart check out dude to me; "Wow, I don't think I've ever seen can of spray paint for 99 cents before!")

While at Wally-Mart I picked up two more items. I had been pondering how to make the arms and vanes of the windmill itself. Above are two packs of assorted square hardwood dowels (about $1 each), and the tough nylon lattice used for rug hooking projects. 

The sheds, posts, and supports were dry brushed with first a yellow brown craft paint, then CC  Cadet Grey.

The base will be finished last. 

I wound up making the arms of the windmill by using epoxy to attack 4 x 1/4" square wood dowels to the 3/8" fender washers. This was both less strong than I wanted for the long haul, and wobbly on the wind shaft, so a second washer was epoxied to the other side of the 4 dowels - much better! The arms were 120mm long for the tall windmill

and 90 mm for the shorter one. 

The vanes were cut out of the nylon rug hooking lattice, spray painted black,  and attached to the arms with epoxy. The lattice of the vanes was then dry brushed with Cadet Grey ( a very flat light grey with no blue tone at all). 

I painted the arms (and washers) of the windmill a light red brown for contrast to the shed.

I am going to leave the arms of the windmill unglued  to the wind shaft to allow easier transport. They are pretty sturdy, and when they are inevitably struck by the "Hands of God" during play, I'd rather have the arms knocked off the shed (and easily put back on) than knock over the hole structure!

At this point, they are still a bit of a WIP (windmill in process). I need to add a small porch and ladder on the door side of the mill using balsa wood, and then terrain and finish the bases. That shouldn't take more than a day when I have a chance, and then I'll post some more pictures of the completed project!

A little Gordon Lightfoot - perhaps my favorite of his songs!