The Windmill Tower
The new Bryan windmill towers are made from all galvanised steel, this older one however was made from normal mild steel and the paint had long gone. A feature that I found unusual though was it was all riveted just like the fans of the Bryan Windmills.
I treated the whole tower to the same restoration process minus the acid dip. It was completely wire brushed using a high speed rotating brush and sandpaper in some areas it then was given the same undercoat of Industrial anti rust primer then several coats of the Anti rust topcoat which can be used on its own.However this is something I didn't want to be doing again so an extra coat now of primer may give me many more years the primer also fills any of the small rust dimples in the steel.
Notice the section about a half a meter from the top of the tower this is to hold the mast central. It has a hole through this section with a screw on cap that you fill with grease as you screw the cap on grease is forced onto the mast to lubricate it as the mast rotates in this holder.
This section is about 15 ft. tall. I made another section to go on the bottom which was to be concreted into the ground. It was about 2.6 m in height with the 0.6m to be underground in footings.
All the old parts had now be fixed up as best I could and were in a state that they could be put together. All I needed now I thought was a pump, a push rod for the pump to connect to the gearbox push rod, a swivel device to connect these two pieces as the original was missing and a lever to turn the pump off.
So it was a trip back to Colac to buy some parts.