Hello, Been awhile, I made 4 blades out of 3/4 x 6 wood I had laying around. I made the blades 4' long and used the wing design. I cut the tips at 2" wide on center, then used skill saw to cut leading edge at 30 degrees, the trailing edge, best i could get was 45 degree, I left about an 1/8 inch on leading and trailing edges for blending in. I then set the blade at lowest setting, a heavy 1/8" deep cut I guess, and held the saw kind of crossways or like 90 degrees from direction I cut and sort of dragged it along the length of the boards and kind of hogged out some wood from the trailing edge about 3/4 ways up to the leading edge.
Next I took a hand planer and planed for a long time, LOL, But I got the blades shaped up pretty decent, I did all four, then looked them over, compared did them again and I guess one more time, they looked pretty close then and fairly simular. I then flipped the blades over and measured a foot down on trailing edge side and planed some wood out in order to get a little more angle of attack to help in blades starting to spin a little easier. Next I sanded the blades to smooth them out,and blend then in a little better.
Next I mounted the blades on the old ceiling fan blade mounts, lined them up as close as I could, and drilled the new blades and bolted them on. Then I took and set it up on a brick and a board to check for balance, had one blade pretty heavy, so took sander and made adjustments, got close and had to sand some off another blade, finnaly it looked well balanced.
I have a post about 5' high or so I mounted windmill on to check it over, definitly laning forward have to reblance bottom mount, blades spin a little from wind but always stop same blade down, so I took the sander and fine tuned the balancing some. Looked good so up on the pole it went, still not balanced to good so blade end is heavy or leaning down some.
With windmill on pole, new blades on, wired to headlight, blades spin much better, pretty smooth, could spin a little faster, but overall it is much better now. blades turn with practically no wind at all, just a light breeze gets them going.
Did a volt check, no good as I thought, motor is still connected direct drive, and only put out .100 volt low end was .08.
I took windmill down yesterday, one of the bolts fell out that holds blade to center hub and blade dropped down, just as well, need to take it down to work on getting speed up, I am going to with v belts for now until I get gear ratio about right, I am going to try for 12volts at low rpm, and see how much more speed it needs to get to 15 volts.
I found a pulley, 8.5" Diameter, will put that on blade shaft, need to dig around for small pulley for motor.
Thats where it is at for now, Thanks for all the help, comments ect. It all helps!
