Windmills

 Howdy friends and neighbors.  On to the lighter side of things, the other day I was talking about the need to pour oil into some windmill heads and the guys with me gave me a blank stare like they had no clue what I was talking about.  Then it me like a 20 pound pipe dog, there are lots of folks out there that have no experience or knowledge of how windmills work. 

 

This all rattled a story out of my medulla oblongata about a time when I was in college at Oklahoma State University.  Several buddies and I were socializing at and around our makeshift 10-acre ranch within the city limits of Stillwater.  Then another ol’ chap drove up looking to beg, borrow or steel a water tank so he could haul a load of H2O to the cows he was employed to look after while in college (money for text books, probably??)  Anyway, I asked what was wrong with the well. He allowed it was a windmill and it wasn’t pumping.  Here is where my years of riding around with my dad and granddad working on and fixing windmills paid off!  Not cash though, just bottled rocky mountain spring water.

 

Like a trained surgeon I started asking questions.  I asked, “Is the fan on the head turning?”  A few other buddies gathered to listen.  The answer was, “yep.”  Translation: The “fan” is the fan at the top of a windmill; it’s the thing that spins.  The next question I asked, “is the rod going up and down?”  He thought for a second and grabbed a chew, “yep.”  Translation: the “rod” is a metal, fiberglass, or wood rod that by connecting the spinning fan through the gear head at the top of a windmill converts circular motion into vertical motion and the rod goes up and down in about six to ten inch strokes.

 

My next question to him had the entire bull session attendees listening.  I asked the highly technical question “can you hear the checks rattling?”  His reply, as he spit between his boots, “pardon?”  Everyone else looked about for clarification.  Now I wasn’t among city folks at this meeting.  It was a clear majority of country kids.  I asked again if he could hear the checks rattling and his reply was “I’ve bounced checks but never heard them rattle!”  Translation: the rod is connected to a check valve down in the water well, which opens on the down stroke and closes on the up stroke.  As water rushes through the open valve on the down stroke, a steel ball rattles against the little cage it’s held in. Below the moving check valve is a stationary check valve that lets water into the “working barrel” on the up stroke and then closes on the down. It rattles as well.  When a windmill is working properly you can hear a rattle on both the up and down stroke. 

 

By this time everyone present allowed that we should take a road trip and go see if my friend’s windmill was rattling.  Only in college!  Oh, also, my friend offered to buy refreshments if we could fix the dry situation.  Off we went.  Three pickups, a Ford Explorer, and a 1981 caddy all entered the property at which the windmill was located. (The owner and employer was gone out of town.) 

 

Yep, the fan was turning, the rod was stroking, but I put my ear to the two inch steel pipe and alas, there was no rattling.  That is where years and years of riding shotgun and fix’n windmills with my granddad remedied the situation.  The crowd had a puzzled look and some were even putting their ears to the steel pipe to confirm my diagnosis.  Again like a surgeon would ask for a flesh cutting apparatus, I asked for a hammer. In all those farm boy rigs there was not a single hammer.  Only a shovel and I said it would do.  An array of questions fired in from the gallery.  But silence fell as I explained that I was going to just give it a good whack or two.  Side bets were placed as doubters wagered against the believers. 

 

WHACK!!!  I hit the steel pipe that the rod traveled through into the depths of the well.  Silence… then rattle, rattle, rattle and water began to pour from the pipe.  Thunderous applause on one side as the doubters began to count the cost on the other.  Translation: as the checks wear from thousands and thousands of strokes, the steel ball starts to wear the cage it’s housed in.  Thus, after a while the steel ball can get stuck in the cage.  By hitting the pipe at ground level, vibrations travel down the pipe and can cause the steel ball to fall back into it’s seat and start pumping water again.  I was forever famous among the Oklahoma State alums as the one that fixed a windmill by hitting it with a shovel.

 

So, now if the nerds up in I.T. start talking computer lingo, just start explaining how a windmill works and you can stump ’em.  At least I did, once.  Next week I’ll explain “leathers.”

 

I’m Monte Tucker, and that is what’s under my, “I’m a lover, a fighter, a wild bronc rider, and pretty good windmill man” hat!