Build Your Own Wind Turbine

We had another successful wind turbine building course last week with Paul and Kevin from Cork, David from Wexford, Lee from Wicklow, Mícheál from Cavan and then we were joined on Wednesday and Thursday by Michael from Derry. 

This workshop was a deviation from the norm where we would build a wind turbine from scratch. But this time our magnets did not arrive in time, reckon it was the ash cloud, so we had a 4.2m machine that needed finishing and decided to make a set of 2.4m blades.

For the blades we glued up some 3x11/2” spruce with waterproof pva. This timber was 70mm thick and gave us a nice twist as can be seen in the photos.

The March wind turbine building workshop started today in Ballinamore, we are making a 1800mm 24v machine.

We started the day working on the blades, they are made up from six lenghts of 2x1" white deal to give us the width we need.

Rather than buying glue we mixed up some of the vinyl-ester, this is the first time I have used it to laminate blades and it will be interesting to see how it works over time. This little turbine is going to be installed at our place so I can keep an eye on it.

Putting on the Glue