Quarter size post mill generating electricity, based on Bourn mill 🌍

Back in Feb 2024, Gareth Ross Buddell commented that he was building a 1/4 scale post mill. By July 2024, he'd completed it, and decked it out with colourful sails created from an old curtain. Gareth does work as a furniture restorer, and had some experience studying classical boat building at Falmouth Marine School, so building the mill in his garden in Bishopstone, Wiltshire was an extension of these pursuits. Its main structure is in green oak, costing a few hundred £s, and with electrical expertise help from Anthony Owen has incorporated a 500 watt e-bike motor being used as a generator to produce electricity. The design was adapted from survey drawings of Bourn windmill in Cambridgeshire. The windshaft turns a large wheel where the brakewheel is in the original, which meshes with a lantern gear which drives the generator via a pulley. There are some videos of the mill on Gareth's YouTube channel, The MillWrite, including it in action in a local field where it catches more wind than it does in the village high street.

Gareth wrote to King Charles about the mill, thinking it would appeal to his eco-ideals, and offering to oversee building him a version. The original prototype has been promissed to TWIGS Community Gardens.

As a follow up to this small scale device, Gareth has produced plans for a full scale mill, again to produce electricity, and is seeking offers of help, including crowdfunding the materials cost, but also volunteers say from a carpentry college, and from a landowner to provide a site for it, with perhaps a charity to operate the mill.