When I came up with the idea of incorporating an actual farm windmill as part of this artwork, I initially didn't give a lot of thought to exactly how that was going to become a reality. When it comes to building or fixing things, I am not very gifted. Fortunately, I have other family members who are willing to come to my aid when there is a need. As you saw in an earlier post, my Dad built the canvases. My brother Mike is a real fix-it guy. My other brother Bruce was the brains behind conceiving the apparatus we needed to mount this windmill.
The windmill itself weighs 60-70 pounds, and it needed to hang at the end of a shaft projecting out of the wall, beyond the surface of the canvases. That requires a hefty device.
Bruce came up with a blueprint of what was needed, and even built in a system of set-screw adjustments that would allow for slight adjustments to be made to the tilt of the wheel after mounting if necessary.
He then worked directly with the guys at Randy's Ironworks of Orange City to fabricate this heavy-duty item. I do mean heavy-duty–I think it probably weighed at least 30 pounds. I'm not usually into this kinda thing, but it was a thing of beauty, and I think I thought so because it looked like it was going to work so perfectly.
The contractors building the event center had built into the wall extra support to allow for mounting at the appropriate area of the wall. You can see from the photos that the base plate is embedded just beneath the sheetrock. After Bruce finished installing the apparatus, the drywall crew came back and patched in the sheetrock, textured and painted. All that extends from the wall is the shaft for mounting he mill.
That's my brother in the pictures above. I couldn't have done it without you, Bruce.
It is nice to have a wide range of family and friends with different talents for just such an occasion.
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