Please, I need help!

[dgman]

Yes the Finnish plywood comes in 1/4". Here is a link for some 1/4" Finnish plywood. It is listed as Finland plywood: www.sloanswoodshop.com. It is not the same as MDF. Do not use MDF for outdoor project! Is is nothing but sawdust formed with binders and will fall apart when it gets wet. Also do not plane MDF. With all the glues and binders used, it will dull your planer blades in a hurry. Plane only solid woods in a planer. No plywood or any man made woods!

[Rapid Roger]

thcubed,
This is actually my second windmill. The first blew over 4 times and broke (I live in Kansas and we do get winds over 60 MPH once in a while  ) I kept fixing it until the last time and then it was just too far gone so I built another from the ground up. This time I used 4 pieces of angle iron 24" long and drove it into the ground 12" and bolted the legs to it.
It has a crank shaft at the top and it drives a "suction rod" up and down on a 2" throw but, it doesn't really do anything as far as "work" or bringing up water.
The entire structure is made of cedar (except for the crank and bearings which are steel) The first one lasted about 3 years and this one has stood for over 1 year so far.
As far as selling it, I have never thought about it and no one has asked to buy it so I really have no idea where I would price it.
The wood is fairly inexpensive and is good with weather, the bearings were about $40.00 and I used long 5/8" bolts for the crankshaft and I guess it took me about 4 days to build the second one. (Face it, the first one took two weeks but, I had a pattern and knew more or less how to do it the second time around  )
I think you could use your same plan and just scale it down so that it would be easier to handle and could be either anchored or moved inside during bad weather. And you would have a saleable item. As to price, that is just something you will have to figure out with your cost and time spent as well as your area people.

Rog

[thcubed]

thcubed,
This is actually my second windmill. The first blew over 4 times and broke (I live in Kansas and we do get winds over 60 MPH once in a while  ) I kept fixing it until the last time and then it was just too far gone so I built another from the ground up. This time I used 4 pieces of angle iron 24" long and drove it into the ground 12" and bolted the legs to it.
It has a crank shaft at the top and it drives a "suction rod" up and down on a 2" throw but, it doesn't really do anything as far as "work" or bringing up water.
The entire structure is made of cedar (except for the crank and bearings which are steel) The first one lasted about 3 years and this one has stood for over 1 year so far.
As far as selling it, I have never thought about it and no one has asked to buy it so I really have no idea where I would price it.
The wood is fairly inexpensive and is good with weather, the bearings were about $40.00 and I used long 5/8" bolts for the crankshaft and I guess it took me about 4 days to build the second one. (Face it, the first one took two weeks but, I had a pattern and knew more or less how to do it the second time around  )
I think you could use your same plan and just scale it down so that it would be easier to handle and could be either anchored or moved inside during bad weather. And you would have a saleable item. As to price, that is just something you will have to figure out with your cost and time spent as well as your area people.

Rog

Thanks Rog!!  I agree the cedar was inexpensive, the bearings were almost $40 for a set of 4 and I too used 5/8" bolt. So it sounds like we have the same invested in the material. But time, now that's a different story. It took us 5 or 6 weeks (I lost track) to make 9 of them. But like I said earlier, with us both being handicap, we move much slower and take a lot of breaks!!  There were only a few days we were able to put in a fair amount of time. 

I guess I will just store these until Spring and see if we can do any better!!  Thank you to everyone for your encouragement and advice!!  I knew this was the place to go for help on these!!  I think we will continue to make them during the winter and see if we can move them. We can always drop the price if we need to.

Terry

[wombatie]

Everyone as given you sound advise and I cannot add to it because I live in a different country, but what I will say is, Don't be discouraged it as happened to all of us at one time or another, you just learn to pick yourself up and carry on.  All the best for the future.

Marg

[julief]

Your pricing is not unreasonable.  In the area I live in, you would easily get that much for them.  It sounds like that nursery is just the place to market them.

[slowcutter]

Don't give up.
My wife is a photographer & we do a Sunday market all summer.
If she had 50 cents for every nice work,she would make around $100,000.00 a summer.

I give my work away mostly sell 3-4 peaces a year.I could maybe sell more but I hate finish work.