2017 International Windmiller's Trade Fair: Day Four

Our fourth and final day in Kendallville began bright and early with an event outside on the grounds of the Mid America Windmill Museum. Attendees got the opportunity to watch the installation of a Fort Wayne windmill onto a steel tower. Todd Skinner and Jim Koch of MAWM performed the installation surrounded by a fairly large crowd of intent onlookers. Shortly after the Fort Wayne windmill installation, the auction got under way with a good selection of rusty iron available. After the auction was finished, everyone made their way indoors for the annual trivia contest hosted by Dr. T. Lindsay Baker. The 75 windmill history questions proved a challenge, but in the end the matchsticks were tallied and the top three winners received some nice door prizes. (See the picture below for the winners.) 

After the trivia challenge, the business meeting got under way to decide the location for the 2019 IWTF. There were three locations vying for the chance to host in two years time. We presented our plans for the event and the activities we hoped to make available, as did the representatives from the other two locations. The votes were tallied later that night at the 29th Annual IWTF Banquet. The banquet that evening was really nice and featured great food, live entertainment, and some presentations. Dr. T. Lindsay Baker gave a great talk about windmiller Garnet O. Brooks. The 2017 Billie Wolf Award was presented by Coy Harris to Francine Popeck & the late Bob Popeck. 

At the end of the banquet, votes were submitted for the location of the 2019 Trade Fair. The votes were then collected and tallied....

We are pleased to announce that the Kregel Windmill Factory Museum in Nebraska City will be the host for the 2019 International Windmiller's Trade Fair!

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all the attendees, hosts, presenters, and vendors at this year's Trade Fair. Although the Kregel Museum as an institution has had representation at the IWTF in the past, it was David and I's first Trade Fair experience and we received such a warm and gracious welcoming into the fold. Whether it is your first Trade Fair or 29th Trade Fair, all those that attend are kindred spirits united by a love of rusty iron. We hope to see everyone next year in Lubbock, TX at the American Wind Power Center and we will do our best to put together a memorable few days here in Nebraska City in 2019!

Time-lapse video of the Fort Wayne windmill installation at the Mid America Windmill Museum this morning. Installation was completed by Todd Skinner & Jim Koch.

The yearly windmill trivia contest was hosted by Dr. T. Lindsay Baker who put the Trade Fair attendees to the test with 75 deftly prepared and challenging questions.

And the winners are: 1st Place, Walter Galbreath; 2nd Place, Adam Balsick; 3rd Place, Loren Lockman

May Your Blades Always Catch the Wind

2017 International Windmiller's Trade Fair: Day Three

Our third day here in Indiana started out a little rainy, but things cleared up and the sun came out strong for another beautiful day at the Trade Fair. We fielded more questions and welcomed more positive interest about the 2019 IWTF in Nebraska City throughout the morning. In the early afternoon, many attendees traveled to the Flint & Walling factory in Kendallville for a tour of their facility. Flint & Walling has been an industrial institution in Kendallville for 151 years, producing a wide variety of windmills in their earlier years and now specializing in various types of booster pumps, centrifugal pumps, and jet pumps. After everyone had returned from the factory tour, we were treated to a great presentation by Kevin Moore, from Cloverdale, CA, about the windmills of Northern California (The Land of Fruits & Nuts)! They really had their own distinctive designs that were well-suited to their region and climate.

Our day at the Trade Fair finished off with a Hog Roast outside on the grounds of the Mid America Windmill Museum. The pork was great! So were the great people and conversation! We will be back at Mid America Windmill Museum bright and early tomorrow for the final day of the 2017 IWTF. Stay tuned!

(One of the ELI windmill heads in the collection of the Mid America Windmill Museum)

(Had to take some pictures of the Nebraska connections)

May Your Blades Always Catch the Wind!

2017 International Windmiller's Trade Fair: Day Two

Day Two of the International Windmiller's Trade Fair started early today with registration at 8am. We got our table set up in Baker Hall at the Mid America Windmill Museum, complete with free apple cider provided by Kimmel Orchard & Vinyard. An opening address was given by Jerry Davis who unfortunately announced the recent death of Russell Baker, the founder of the Mid America Windmill Museum and great friend to many long-time Windmillers, on Saturday June 10th. A wonderful welcome was delivered by Kendallville Mayor Suzanne Handshoe, which was followed by a history of the Museum and rememberance of Russell Baker presented by Larry Doyle. A short video followed highlighting the many years Baker devoted to the Mid America Windmill Museum. 

As the long day of trading and swapping rusty iron got under way, we were happy to greet a good amount of Trade Fair attendees at our table and begin to promote Nebraska City as the site of the 2019 IWTF. The reception we received from those that came to inspect our table in Baker Hall was incredibly positive and most people seemed quite pleased at the idea of the Kregel Museum hosting the 2019 Trade Fair in Nebraska City, especially since it would be a new location for the event. Although there are a couple other venues vying for the IWTF in 2019, we are positive that Nebraska City will have a good chance at winning the opportunity to host due to the wonderful attractions, accommodations, and entertainment our great city offers. We look forward to speaking with many more Trade Fair attendees over the next couple days about the benefits of an event in Nebraska City. We are also excited about the upcoming offerings at this year's Trade Fair, including the Hog Roast, assembly of the Fort Wayne windmill on the ground of the Mid America Museum, and the 29th Annual IWTF Banquet. Again, stay tuned for more updates from the International Windmiller's Trade Fair in Kendallville!

May Your Blades Always Catch the Wind!

2017 International Windmiller's Trade Fair: Day One, The Journey

Well, we had quite the full day of travel to get to our destination before the start of the 2017 International Windmiller's Trade Fair tomorrow in Kendallville, IN. The day began at 7:00am in Nebraska City and ended almost 12 hours later in Auburn, IN, just a few miles away from the Mid America Windmill Museum, the host this year's Trade Fair. The reason we traveled over 650 miles, besides taking part in the 29th Annual IWTF, is to propose Nebraska City and the Kregel Windmill Factory Museum as the host of the 2019 International Windmiller's Trade Fair! The Trade Fair has never been hosted in Nebraska City and it would be an honor for the Kregel Museum to host this yearly gathering. We have some great plans for the 2019 Trade Fair and we will be promoting those plans over the next three days. Keep and eye out here on the blog for updates, photos, and videos throughout the Trade Fair that highlight some of the great events and activities this Fair has to offer!

May Your Blades Always Catch the Wind!

2nd Annual Water Topic for Nebraska Teachers Workshop/Art Show Wrap-up

We are very happy to say that the Power of Wind Art Show that was held during the week of Arbor Day out at the Kimmel Education & Research Center was an astounding success! During the exhibition, we welcomed over 150 visitors to the show. The exhibit featured 225 pieces of artwork from 18 different countries. A smaller sample of artwork is now on display in the front lobby of the Kregel Museum, and there are now a few select prints from the show available in museum gift shop. The smaller exhibit in the museum will be on display for the next few months, after which it will travel around to various colleges and institutions. We hope that, if you were not able to visit the full exhibit while it was on display KERC, you will consider dropping by the museum to have a look at the featured works. The Power of Wind Art Show will now be an annual event.

The next big event for the Kregel Museum is coming up at the end of this month on May 31st and June 1st, which is the Water Topics for Nebraska Teachers workshop! This is our second year holding this unique event which features presenters on a variety of topics related to Nebraska groundwater, natural resources, and conservation. This workshop is being co-sponsored by the Richard P. & Laurine Kimmel Charitable Foundation along with the American Groundwater Trust, Groundwater Foundation, and the Water for Food Institute. This free two-day workshop will qualify for professional development credit and is intended for educators of all types, from elementary to high school level. 

It is important to note that the agendas for each year's workshop will be different from the last. So, if you or a teacher you know has attended the workshop previously they can be confident that any upcoming workshop will be a totally new experience. Some of the changes to the agenda for this year from last year include a tour of the Nebraska City Utilities Well Field and the Nebraska City Water Treatment Plant hosted by Cathy Meyer, the plant's superintendent. Vaughn Hammond, Kimmel Orchard's Operations and Education Team Leader, will be giving a tour of the Orchard facilities. Similar to last year, there will also be a full tour of the Kregel Windmill Factory Museum. 

The Kregel Museum will also be rolling out a brand new program for teachers at this year's workshop, which has been in development for almost two years. The Kregel Museum Classroom Discovery Kit Program consists of educational boxes filled with interesting and unique lesson plans, activities, experiments, equipment, worksheets, and other materials that teachers can use to educate students on a variety of subjects. There will eventually be four Kits available through the program, each on a specific topic, such as water science, wind science, and Industrial Revolution history. Teachers attending the workshop will get the first look at this exciting program, as well as reservation priority should they choose to rent a Kit. More information about the Classroom Discovery Kit Program will be available on the Kregel Museum website after the workshop, so keep an eye out!

May Your Blades Always Catch the Wind!

Power of Wind Art Show

As the year is marching right along and spring is beginning to rear its head, it's time to give everyone an update on the events and programs that we have planned for 2017. It has been a busy winter here at the museum as we prepare for another great season. This year we are continuing to focus our efforts on making the museum a destination and resource for educators and students. In terms of our educational plans for 2017, we have brought back a very successful event from last year, created an entirely new program, and partnered with another local institution to facilitate a week-long art show this spring. 

The Power of Wind Art Show is our first big event this year, which runs from April 24th through April 29th. The museum is co-sponsoring this event with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Kimmel Education & Research Center here in Nebraska City. The original pieces of artwork on display during the show represent the various ways in which the wind has been harnessed and used as energy. Many different types of artwork will be exhibited demonstrating wind power in its various aspects. These types of art include posters, paintings, photographs, illustrations, sculptures, original stories, poems, and much more. We have had a significant amount of registrants for the show so far, both from teachers that have signed their classes up and from individual professional artists that would like to showcase their work. We have registered over 400 students for the show from all over Southeast Nebraska, including Omaha, Peru, and Nebraska City. Individual artists have registered for the event, some already sending in their pieces, from all over the globe. We currently have registered artists from Thailand, India, Ukraine, Netherlands, and Belgium!

Mills, Maria Ivan (Ukriane), original artwork submitted for the Power of Wind Art Show

Registration for the Power of Wind Art Show is still open and we have new artists joining in every day. If you would like to submit a piece of art for the exhibit entries are being accepted in person at the Kimmel Education & Research Center or the Kregel Windmill Factory Museum from April 20th through April 22nd. Online submissions or questions can be sent to the Executive Director of the KWFM at david@kregelmuseum.org or by visiting the museum's event page and filling out the appropriate form.

The art categories for the show are:

• Illustration
• Painting
• Photography
• Sculpture
• Literature

Awards will be given to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in both the Youth and Adult divisions. Along with the award medals, winning artists will also be given various prizes provided Pizza Hut, Raising Cane's, Dairy Sweet, Sonic Drive-In, and Boulder Creek Amusement Park. Judging for the exhibit will be conducted by volunteers from various institutions including Kimmel-Harding-Nelson Center for the Arts and the Nebraska Arts Council. This event is free and open to the public, so even if you aren't considering submitting a piece of your own art, please join us during the week at Kimmel Education & Research Center to enjoy the huge amount of beautiful artwork that will be on display.

May your blades always catch the wind!

A Closer Look: Line Shaft Systems

Normally in this segment of the blog we tend to focus on smaller artifacts that visitors might not regularly notice or know much about. However, this time around I thought I would cover a little bit about a very large object, or set of objects, in the museum that can surprisingly get overlooked, the line shaft power system and the motors that power it. A line shaft system is a method of power transmission from a rotating central shaft, through pulleys, and on to individual pieces of machinery or equipment. This was the standard system used in factories to power multiple pieces of equipment from the Industrial Revolution through the mid-20th century.

The main central shaft can be powered by any number of different energy sources, such as a water wheel, steam engine, internal combustion engine, wind, or electric motors (later in the early 20th century). The line shaft in use at the Kregel Windmill Company was fairly standard for the time it was built around 1879. The shaft runs latitudinal to the factory building and is mounted in the ceiling with belts running down to one piece of machinery or laterally over to multiple pieces ran off of one secondary shaft. The power is transferred from the shaft and pulleys (also known as millworks) to the machinery via flat belts. In the case of the Kregel Windmill Company, the belts are made from buffalo hide rather than cow leather, mostly because it is much thicker and a longer continuous belt can be made due to the much larger hide. In later years canvas and textured rubber belts were manufactured that were cheaper and easier to produce than hide belts. According to the 1910 Grand Rapids tool catalog we have in our reference library here at the museum, customers could purchase a 4" wide belt for $1.50 per foot. That means, considering inflation, that would come to $36.46 per foot today; a exorbitant price. 

Before the widespread use of electricity the main source of power for the Kregel Windmill Company line shaft system was a Van Duzen 14 hp gasoline engine, which was mounted inside the building with the exhaust piped out through the back wall. This engine would have been incredibly noisy and oily, making it the factory a rough place to work in those days. Since then these engines have become extremely rare and unfortunately the museum is not in possession of the Van Duzen engine owned by the Kregels. The only information we have to confirm their having owned one is a sales sheet from 1931 that shows them selling one and a worn out two-ball governor from that particular model on the front shelf in the factory. For those wondering, the engine was sold by the Kregels for $75; it is worth considerably more now since there are only a handful in existence. 

Van Duzen 14hp Gasoline Engine at Coolspring, PA

In getting back to the line shaft system itself, during the majority of its operation, maintenance was a serious issue to keep up with on a daily basis. Most of the bearings in a line shaft system are Babbitt, a poured, molded bearing material made from lead and tin that long predated the current standard of roller and ball bearings. Although Babbitt was a useful material it needed lubrication quite often to keep the bearing from seizing up or wearing down the soft material. In the small Kregel Windmill Company factory there are approximately 40 individual grease points for the 18 pieces of machinery. That's not counting the points where the shaft is mounted to the structural beams of the factory building, known as pillow blocks. These grease points would need to be oiled at least every couple days if not daily, depending on the frequency of use. At most the gas engine system could operate about 3 machines at one time, so the oiling frequency would be less in those years compared to 6 or 7 machines after the advent of electric motors. 

One of the first large-scale line shaft operations in the United States after the Industrial Revolution was the famous Lowell Mills in Lowell, MA. Beginning around 1828, line shafts were employed in those mills to power dozens of automated looms. Below is an incredible video that demonstrates the complexity of these line shaft powered mills.

Much like in the video, the pulleys (or commonly blocks) at the Kregel Windmill factory are made of wood. Wood was a great material to use for these line shaft blocks for a couple of reasons. Firstly, wood is readily available and these blocks can be made from scrap pieces of wood fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle to make any size block that was needed. Second, wood contains natural tannins that slowly leach out to the surface and act as a sort of dressing for the buffalo hide belts, meaning that they do not necessarily have to be dressed with pine tar or another sticky sort of treatment to avoid slippage. 

There are many interesting ways of using the belts on a line shaft system to perform different jobs. The orientation of the belts on the blocks allows for changes in the output speed, output direction, and various other desired modifications. By using different sizes of pulleys in different combinations, as well as various belt configurations, factories could connect two pulleys together in a myriad of ways. In fact, the pulleys did not even need to be in line with each other, as shown by just a couple of the following examples.

I hope this serves as a good general primer on the subject of line shaft systems in factories during the Industrial Revolution. There is obviously much more to these complex systems than what I have discussed here, but I just wanted to give a quick overview. I hope that if anyone is interested they will take the time to swing by the museum and have a look at our system to learn more. After all, the Kregel Windmill Factory Museum is one of only 13 places in the United States where you can see an intact, historic line shaft system. Although the system is functional, thanks to our renovation project, we aren't able to provide the public with demonstrations due to the safety issues that would cause. However, we have videos available to show just how the system works. So stop by and have a look, we'd be happy to show you!

May your blades always catch the wind!