after that, i would suggest a friction brake or sliding pin to hold it still. dont leave the coils shorted for too long and expect the stator to last 
Why not?
With the rotor slowed to almost nothing you have very little power collected from the wind to be dissipated in the rotor in keeping it slowed - especially as compared to the power dissipated during normal operation (let alone the pulse when you brake it). The blades stall and the force drops quite low due to the loss of lift. Your current is what fights the force, so with low force you have low current and 'way lower current SQUARED resistive heating. Further, with the mill's tail held in furling position there's also little power available even if it were spun up.
Of course there's no reason, once the blades are turning very slowly if at all, not to tie a cord to one of them and tie it down - preferably to something that yaws with the mill, unless you also tie the mill against yaw.
So I'd leave the short there. If nothing else, it provides you with safety. If you manage to knock your other tiedowns loose while up the tower with the mill it will keep it from spinning up to more than a gentle motion.
Just be sure that your short is on the genny side of the diodes, so you don't pop 'em when initially braking the mill.
Note that this argument about stalling and low current applies only to lift-based mills - essentially all HAWTs and the darreius-style VAWTs. A drag turbine like a Savonius will give you more force (and thus more current) once it's reached crawl-speed equilibrium with the electric braking. It will keep heating your genny, even more than under normal operation. Thus you want to use electric braking only for slowing it and provide some alternaitve braking (or parking braking if it's small enough that you can slow it the rest of the way by hand) once you've gotten it down to a sane speed.
