Portabella Village Windmill

~ Portabella Village Windmill ~
(click picture for larger version)

One of my projects is a rural village, "Portabella", that specializes in growing cotton for wool (that's how wool is crafted in the default, Minetest game) and flowers for dyes.

The idea of an old-time mill seemed to fit well with the overall theme of the village. The area didn't lend itself to a waterfall or a river strong enough to power a watermill. The next thing that came to mind was a windmill.

~ Portabella Windmill - Side View ~
(click picture for larger version)

The windmill is the tallest structure in the village so I wanted a way for players to be able to look out from the top. In a real-life windmill, having so many windows in the cap would be a bad idea but it works in Minetest make-believe.

The stone cap is a bit of a quandary for me. I want a dark-grey color and rough textures for the cap but not the weight of stone. Grey wool was too smooth and creating a custom block just for this one-time use isn't practical.

So... I went back to using stone to construct the windmill's cap.

The overall size of the windmill does give the impression that it would have enough strength to handle the weight of the stone cap.

The windmill's main blades are three layers deep. Tree trunks for the arms, white wool for the cloth sails, and wood fence for the lattice-like frame that the cloth sails are tied to.

~ Portabella Windmill - Rear View ~
(click picture for larger version)

After a bit of research, I found out that the "fantail", the small windmill at the back of windmills, turns the windmill's cap and blades into the wind. I used stone blocks to represent gear boxes and wrought iron fences and bars to represent the turning shafts. There is a service deck that players can walk out onto.

Here is a link to a YouTube video of how the fantail turns the windmill's sails into the wind:

"How a Windmill Cap Moves (Great Bircham Windmill)"
http://youtu.be/5KuRBhr9mJ0

---

~ Portabella Windmill - Main Gears ~
(click picture for larger version)

Inside the cap is the drive-shaft supported by a steel-framed bearing in the back and wood-framed bearings in the front. At the center are the gears that transfer the wind-power to the machinery below.

I still have to figure out how to construct the simulated mechanisms inside the windmill. There is a balance that has to be struck between filling space with constructed details to make it look nice and leaving space for players to move around in.

Here is a link to a YouTube video of a working, professional windmill operation in the Netherlands. The host has worked at the mill for twenty years and takes you through the inner-workings and daily routine of operating an old-time windmill:

"WORKING WINDMILL The craft of milling : a day of work at 'De Zandhaas' cornmill"
http://youtu.be/t9KI2g-r8rA



I was most interested in where the gears were and in what configuration they were in. However, the video showed several other points that really helped when I was working out the details of my Portabella Village Windmill project.

After watching the segment in the video where the host manually turned the cap and climbed up the lattice framework to unfurl the sails, I better understood the dominant, most recognizable feature of a windmill - the large blades. More specifically, I better understood why I saw pictures of windmills with and without sails and where to position the blades when I build windmills in Minetest.



About Comments:
Be civil and show some class toward your fellow commenters.

Trolls will be ignored as will posts containing swear-words or alternate spellings of swear words.