When the windmill started pumping less recently, it became
more clear that the leathers were probably worn and needed to be replaced, so I
called Dean Bennet supply up in Denver
and they said they were probably 1 7/8 cups as that is by far the most common
size, so I ordered 6 of them (2 or 3 extra) and began the process of working on
the windmill. I had replaced them about 13 or so years ago, so I had
forgotten a lot of the details of how to do it.
At 60 this is not surprising, but a bit disappointing not to have access
to so many details. I was on the phone
and happened to look down into a drawer near the phone in my shop and picked up
a white painted metal thing and thought, “…..this looks like a tool I might
have made back then….” , and then I noticed I had written, “windmill tool” on
the side. Ok, that is great; I have one
of the tools I need to hold up the sucker rod sections while they are still
suspended in the well and the top one is being unscrewed and detached. Nate came down to help the first couple of
days and together we sorted out most of the details of the replacement. The windmill stuffing box is actually a hand
pump at the ground level, so it was really difficult to get the three bolts
holding the removable part of it unscrewed.
I barely managed to get some to start to turn out of the cast iron shell
and one even started to shear off and was ready to break. With great difficulty we backed them off
quite a bit and were able to finally, with a little persuasion, force the piece
off of the pump bottom. I had set a
large pulley way up by the top of the tower on a steel bar that sat on the
horizontal bracing and then had set up a 12 volt winch that was hooked up to a
battery charger and a battery and I had replaced the ¼ inch cable with smaller
sized cable so that I could get more length earlier, so now we had a good
system for pulling the sucker rod out. I
considered pulling the rod straight out and bending it down and away from the
windmill in one long (200 ft) piece, but the first attempt made it clear that
that would be a disaster, so we started lifting up two lengths at a time. I realized it would be good to made some sort
of tool that would grab the rod in the middle (the end was held by the windmill
tool, which is basically a squared off u bolt with a plate to clamp onto the
place right below the joint end and capable of holding the hook from the winch cable; so I devised a
strap from an old tow strap with the hook left on it and a knot and loop on the
other end so that I could wrap the 2 feet or so of strap around the rod and
kind of secure it with the hook and use it like a chain clamp. As long as it was wet and fairly tight, it held
pretty good, but we both made pretty sure that someone was also holding it
while the operations were being done to unscrew the sections.
I realized that the rod was extending up by the motor of the
windmill and then realized that if the wind shifted the motor would pinch and
probably devastate and break the rod tops, so we angled them down out of the
way some , thus lowering the rod, which appeared to be a solution. We went to lunch in the house and then when
we go back and after pulling all of the rod out, replacing the leathers using a
large flat screwdriver blade to engage the slot at the bottom as an unscrewing
tool, then we started to reinstall the rod back into the drop pipe. Then, to my horror, I realized that somehow
two of the rods had broken near their ends.
I assume now that one section was not lowered enough and, sure enough,
the vane had spun around and grabbed a rod and caused the weakest part of the
two piece section to snap off. Oops… So now the job was half done, with perhaps
150 feet of the rod put down and I needed to repair the rod. I took the rod to the shop and finally just
used the metal cutting blade on the bandsaw and cut along the steel end stirrup
and cut off the copper rivets, drilled and removed the rivets from the steel
piece, found some bronze rod that I happened to have and cut it into little
lengths, ground the wood from the apatung rod to where the old stirrup would
fit back in place, drilled it through with a hand drill and re-riveted the pieces, peening them with a ball peen
hammer. Then I found another piece of
5/8 bronze rod that I happened to have and rethreaded it to make up the
difference of the lost ends, found a plumbing connector in my plumbing junk and
made up a new rod for the top that now had a cool bronze rod for the stuffing
box rather than the steel one from before that was getting pitted (putting the
steel piece below the plumbing fitting).
After realizing that there may be a weakness with that connection, I
welded the steel end of the rod and black pipe and brazed the bronze end so address my fears of that part
unscrewing in the well.
I started to finish lowering the rod again and got to a
place a few inches from the bottom (maybe 10 or 12) and tried tapping,
carefully turning, banging a little, raising and turning and lowering and
everything I could think of with distressing the rod too much and then figured
that the leathers had swollen too much to fit into the bottom cylinder. It had been about 24 hours since we realized
that the broken rod needed to be repaired and when I started dropping the sucker
rod again and that must have been too long the leathers had expanded too
much. I forgot to put some Vaseline on
the leathers to slow down the swelling process. I decided to pull the sucker rod back up again
so I could dry out the leathers and got up a few feet and the rod would not
lift. The whole winch system was
straining and I was afraid the the 30 year old wood rod would break and leave
me with all the rod stuck in the well and no way to get it out; that would have
meant that I would have to pull all of the 2 inch drop pipe out and find some
way to deal with all of that. That was
way bigger and heavier an operation and I would be into a real kettle of fish
or can of worms. I did not want this to
happen. . I finally called the folks at
Dean Bennet and started talking to them about the problem. They agreed that the leathers had “ swoled up”
and I finally got a hold of to an old
hand up in the Denver Office and he said that the leathers had probably caught
a seam in the drop pipe and that it could actually fold the leathers over,
curling them backwards and maybe then I could get the rod out if that
happened. I was really worried about the
rod as I knew the pressure I was applying was right on the edge of causing a
lot of trouble. He mentioned that he had
read some years ago that “someone had
put egg whites down the well and that sorta greazed everything got the rod out”! Well, Belle and I ran to the store (I mean
drove the 15 miles to the store) and I thought I would have to buy 10 dozen
eggs and then break and separate each one like I learned to do for cooking and
making fine cakes and merangue and such
so many years ago. But she thought they
might sell it in already separated whites and, by golly, we found them in the
store; first the quart boxes of them for $6.99 and then she noticed that they
had a house brand for $3.50 a box, so we grabbed 6 boxes of them and the next
morning I poured 3 boxes down the well, around the drop pipe, down the 150
feet, assuming that the egg whites would sink, then waited a few hours for them
to work their magic and then started working the winch again. Well, by golly, it worked and with a little
jerk and a bob the rod started up again.
At the end it started jerking and acting grabby, so I added another
quart.
I decided, of course, and partly because Nate was now back
at his work and I was alone through all of this last episode, that I would just
work with one 20 foot length at a time, which made it much easier. I put the swollen leathers back in position,
as they did actually peel back, etc., and left them on the cylinder and put
some pipe clamps to hold them in place and put the assembly in the sun to dry
and the next day I called Denver and talked to the good ol’ boy up there and we
discussed the pros and cons of reusing the leathers. He agreed that maybe I would not have to
order new ones, although that would be a good, safe idea and that the neoprene
leathers are actually a better way to go (which the other guy I bought from did
not agree with) and that I should put the best (new extra ) leathers on the top and bottom and
then the best new/old ones of the bunch in the middle and slather it up real
good with Vaseline and go for it again.
So I did all that and “felt” out the bottom fitting without twisting too
much and had a few false settings and a few scares and then, viola, the
assembly seated down there. I had also
welded the bolt end that was getting ready to shear off, cleaned up the threads
real good, including taking a cutting blade on the grinder and cleaning up the
rusted ends, put a good bunch of the same Teflon infused rector seal pipe dope
on the threads and the casing and got them workin real good so that I might not
have so much trouble next time as that thread compound prevents rusting, etc..
So I got it all set
up and I put on the custom “donkey weights” on.
Now they are a story in themselves cause I had gotten into a pickle the
last time I replaced the leathers cause they were real tight in the bottom
cylinder and as soon as I turned the windmill on the friction on the downstroke
caused the wooden rod up above to break (for the umteenth time in the history of working the windmill;
they are the weak link and they break at the drop of a hat or for freezings,
jambings and every other excuse they can come up with to break) and so I
learned to put some counterweights on the wooden rod above, which, the first
time, was a few starter motors and other heavy items that I had lying
around. It was very cumbersome and
tricky, but that extra weight applied for a while, maybe a week or so; don’t
remember; then I took them off. Well a
little while later I was watching Antiques Roadshow and they had a piece of
folk art that was basically a big cast iron chicken in two pieces and they
mentioned that it was a windmill tool (what, another windmill tool?......) and
then I realized what it was; you used it right after you replace the leathers
for a counterweight on the wooden rod, like I had done with the motors. So I carved some donkeys in balsa wood and
made two sand molds from that and then cast two donkey halves with a slot
between them for grabbing the wood and a place marked by stars for where the
two bolts go to clamp them on. I made
them and they sat on the porch for nearly nearly 10 years…..just waiting……like
good donkeys do. So I drilled them out
for the bolts and dragged them up the ladder to the place where I could rest
them on the platform boards there and bolt them together.
So now everything was good and I let the brake go on the vane
and water started pumping out of the spigot and it was fixed. Yay!
Well, not too quick here now, cause the next day I noticed no water
coming out of the pipe first think in the morning. I was freaked!
I detached the wood rod and ,
luckily, I had not put away the winch setup yet and I pulled the hand pump
assemble off real quick (thanks to those easy to turn bolts) and yanked up a
few feet or rod and then I thought I had better try one more time to hand pump
the water, so I dropped the whole assemble down again and it took some time to
reseat into the bottom cylinder and then I pumped like crazy on the hand lever and…..nothing. So I unscrewed the bolts again and yanked
out again and was ready to pull everything out and was sure that the rod was
broken somewhere in the well. As I
pulled more of the early length out, I noticed there was water on the pipe
higher than what the natural water well level would be, so stared and scratched
my head and decided to drop it all again, even though it seemed really broken
and the hand pump acted all too easy to operate (which suggested that the rod
was broken down there somewhere) and, anyway I dropped it again (maybe I did
this whole thing even one more time; I was losing count) and I attached the
hand pump again and worked it up and down and few times and…..water started
coming out! Well I don’t know what
happened, but it might have been some egg white gumming up the bronze balls
down there or maybe I put way too much petroleum jelly on and it was gumming
something up; maybe the leathers had too much jelly on them and had not swollen
well and the pump was weak because of that; maybe raising and dropping the pipe
had loosened some of those issues; who knows…what I did know was that I didn’t
have to yank out 200 feet of pipe again, unscrewing the 11 sections one at a
time and then rescrewing them on; I had just saved a few days work. Yay!!!!
As we speak, the water is still coming out every time the
wind whispers and if this damned drought
continues and the river don’t rise (and sweep away the
whole thing); we will have water for a while, by gosh.
-Thor
Sigstedt, August 2012 (written for Nate, as he missed the last
part and needed to hear the story….and for all those folks out there with
windmills who may have run acrost similar issues and couldn’t figure it out by
googling or anything else….had no luck googling this stuff….. and wondered if
someone else (even a neophyte like me) wouldn’t just put a shout out on the
interweb.)
Thor describes the designs
created as a “rustic coming together of the natural and human world.”
