Update on Preservation of Blueprints

I was just recently trying to think of a new section for the quarterly newsletter that is coming up here real soon and I realized that a while back I had put a section in the newsletter about Jeremy and I working on preserving some of the old blueprints from the drafting table in the factory, but I had never done a follow up. So, that's what I'm doing.

Over the last few months we have been slowly working on removing and restoring some of the cyanotype blueprints from Robert Kregel's drafting table over in the museum. There were quite a few of them just rolled up and still sitting in the drawers. Unfortunately that's not really the proper way to store 80 to 100 year old blueprints. So the plan has been to take them out of there, humidify them, flatten them, and store them properly, with some of the doubles and scrap pieces of paper left in for looks.We have had to be quite careful with some of these as the process that was used to make them many years ago doesn't create an image that is totally permanent and it can be degraded by using the wrong kind of storage paper and other things like that. If you have a minute or two pop over to the Wikipedia page on "cyanotypes", it's quite interesting, but I digress.

Now that several of these blueprints have gone through our flattening process we have been able to take some pictures of them to show on here. Here are just a few of the blueprints. I will post more as we get them photographed. Enjoy

Drawing of ELI windmill head on both wooden and steel tower. Drawn by Robert Kregel

Carburator designed and drawn by Art Kregel

Manifold for R.A. Duff Engineering Co. drawn by Robert Kregel

Design for a Kregel Brand Pump Head drawn by Robert Kregel

Miscellaneous Mechanical Part for R.A. Duff Engineering Co. drawn by Robert Kregel

Kregel Windmill Factory Museum Partnering with PSC

Hello everyone. For the first post of 2014 I would like to just catch everyone up on what's been going on around the museum and what we've been up to here. It has been a busy last few weeks around here as we get ready to for the new year. We are hoping for a large increase in the number of visitors this next year as well as being able to implement some educational programming that we've been wanting to do. As far as the educational aspect of our goals we have been able to gain a great partnership for the next few months.

The Kregel Windmill Factory Museum will be partnering with Peru State College through their class "History of Nebraska" taught by Dr. Sara Crook. This class seeks to find an interesting and new project for the students to work on each semester that it is taught. Previously in the class students had undertaken the project of researching a number of buildings in Auburn, NE in an attempt to create a National Historic District in the city. This semester the students will turn their sites on the history of the Kregel Windmill Co. Each student will be assigned a family that had purchased an "ELI" windmill during the peak production years of the factory (1900 to 1940) and will be doing research, both here at the museum and at the Nebraska State Historical Society in Lincoln, about who purchased the windmill, how much they paid for the windmill, when they bought it, and where the windmill might have been erected. It would be a great plus if some of these antique windmills were still intact on the original farmstead. Having done the research the students will compile a PowerPoint presentation of their findings and present them at an event one evening here in the museum. This event will be held sometime towards the end of the semester on a date yet to be set. We hope to have the family members of the original windmill purchasers in attendance that evening, as well as any of the public that would like to attend.

This partnership is a great step forward in the museum's connection with the local community as well as demonstrating how the museum can be used as an outstanding educational tool. If anyone would like to attend the event, stay connected on Facebook, Twitter, or of course here on the blog for an announcement of the date and time which should be coming soon.

We greatly look forward to this new year, and may your wheels always catch the wind.