liios 



GLEANINGS IN UEK CCLTUKE. 



210 



MAKING HI^ ES BV WIND POWER. 



A Honie-niade A\'iiuliuill and Saw-table Con- 

 structed Wholly ol House-build- 

 ing Material. 



BY T. l\ ROBINSON. 



I never intended to be a bee-man. I began 

 to keep bees when I was 16, caring for 

 father's bees because they always stung him 

 so fearfully. I was as poor as a church 

 mouse when I was 21, and I began to keep 

 bees for the money there is in 

 them. Now I market many thou- 

 sands of pounds of honey annu- 

 ally, although the business with 

 me is but a side issue. 



VV^hen my apiaries, in recent 

 years, amounted to hundreds of 

 colonies I found that, to buy fac- 

 tory-made hives, was a fearful 

 drain on my bank account. Be- 

 ing a born mechanic, and a good 

 practitioner of mechanical art, 

 I determined to turn this talent 

 to account in manufacturing my 

 hives. It was a cheap matter to 

 construct the saw and table nec- 

 essary for making the hives; but 

 the power to turn the saw was 

 quite another thing. It would 

 have been an expensive item in 

 my case to install any of the 

 aitificial powers now in vogue. 

 There was no water that could 

 be "harnessed," but I was fortu- 

 UHtely located on one of the 

 great prairies of Texas where 

 there is no obstruction to the 

 strong steady winds 



I knew that there were hun- 

 dreds of thousands of horsepower 

 going to waste daily on my 

 premises, which, if "harnessed," 

 would do all the hive-making 

 that I should want. 



I therefore constructed a wind- 

 motor which is a marvel of econ- 

 omy, simplicity, and power. I 

 proposed to construct this out of 

 house-building material, without 

 damaging any of it over 10 per 

 cent for house-building purposes, 

 confining the damage to small 

 items. 



I procured a heavy 2i-inch 

 white-metal gas-pipe nearly six 

 feet long for the axle of the big 

 mill. 1 purchased 8 2 X 4-inch 

 scantling, 12 feet long, for the 

 trestle and for the spokes of the 

 wheel. The trestle for the mill is 

 stationary, each part being 

 braced with scantling. The hor- 

 izontal scantling are bolted to 

 posts that are buried deep in the 

 ground. I made iron bearings for 

 ihe bolsters of the trestles, in 

 which the axle revolvjs. In the 

 front I put on a two-foot pulley. 



securing it to the axle by means of a pin. 

 Back of the big windwheel, and out of view, 

 I placed a solid wooden pulley, secured to 

 the axle, which is used for a friction- brake. 

 The windwheel is of simple construction, 

 as shown by the photograph. I used twelve- 

 foot scantling for the spokes, put two arms 

 across on each end of the scantling. Ten- 

 foot corrugated rooting was cut in two. mak- 

 ing sails 5 feet long and 26 in. wide. These 

 I secui'ed to the spokes and arms by means 

 of screws and nails driven into the scantling 

 at the edge, and bent down over the metal. 



T. r. KOI5 



SAWS r. 



IX.SON, BAKTLETT, TP:.\AS, A BEE KEEI'KR WBO 

 U.MBEH FOR HIVES ON A HOME-MADE WIND- 

 POWER SAW. 



