Well, as luck would have it I spent my designated turbine building time trapped in the office, making little depressing turbine models out of Post-it note pages. The frustration of gainful employment.
However, progress has not been totally elusive. Working late into the night, I managed to remove the two little plastic ridges from the top of my 5 gallon bucket, so now all I have to do is cut it in half once my blistered hands heal a bit. Perhaps I should consider expanding my tool collection. My swiss army knife is very versatile but there is a limit.
I was idly looking at a Rockler woodworking catalog last weekend and noticed that they sell hardware for those rotating cabinet shelf things...essentially two metal disks on an axle, fifteen bucks. Wonder if those would work for my turbine. One could somehow stick the plastic vanes to the disks, leaving a tiny space between the inner vane edges and the axle. Then affix a short piece of pvc pipe over the base of the axle, to the bottom of the lower disk. This tube would then be the active axle which would turn the alternator. May make the turbine more efficient since the vanes wouldn't have to overcome the weight and resistance of a full length axle.
On the other hand, the air space between the vane edges and the axle might defeat any increased efficiency.
Thanks for the comment, Demetri...know what you mean about the neighbors. Mine already think I'm a bit strange and when they see me standing on the roof with my turbine they'll probably call the funny farm.
On your turbine did you twist the vanes around the axle or just put them opposite eachother like a basic Savonius shape? I'm having trouble figuring out how wide to make the vanes in proportion to height and how much twisting them really increases efficiency. My pop bottle prototypes seem to work pretty well with narrow, minimally contorted vanes but manufactured turbines seem to have the twisted hourglass shape.
As I type the wind is picking up, inspiring me to go find some bandaids and a pair of leather gloves and get back to work on this.