Jack (1880's tower windmill)

This windmill is one of two windmills in Clayton, Sussex named "Jack and Jill" (after the nursery rhyme). This is Jack.

Windmills have to turn their sails to face into the wind. There are two ways that this can be done.

Jack is a "tower mill" - meaning that the semi-circular cap on the roof rotates to point into the wind. The weird structure with the fan blades is connected to a gearing mechanism that rotates the semi-circular "cap". Jack was built in 1866 and was still operational until 1907. "He" is a rare example of a mill with a male name - almost all mills have female names.

Jill (which I have not yet modeled) is a "post mill" - meaning that the fan mechanism rotates the entire mill central post to face the wind.

There are four STL files here.

• JackMillSails.stl is the arms of the windmill, the four sails and a center hub,
• JackMillWallsAndCap.stl is the main structure of the mill...it assembles in three stages.
• JackMillWindowsAndFan.stl are the windows, door and the mechanism that automatically turns the cap of the mill to face into the wind. This part will definitely need to be printed with supports.
• JackMillAssembled is all of the parts joined together into one file. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PRINT THIS FILE!!! It's just there to show you how it goes together.

An operating mill has cloth stretched across the sails to capture the wind. Tissue paper looks about right in scale. But many disused mills have the cloth removed to avoid damage to the mechanism in strong winds.