Making yard art is a great way to express your creativty, decorate your homestead and recycle old things you no longer use. Here’s how I used a bunch of spare parts to make a weather vane for my property.

The first thing to build was a base that would fit the peak of the barn. The base was an old piece of 3-inch angle iron about 4 feet long with two pieces of 2-foot-long bed-rail angle iron welded perpendicular to the center. As our barn is oriented true north and south, I simply cut out letters for each wind direction from an old truck hood and welded them to the appropriate piece of angle iron, according to the way it would sit atop the barn. I welded two braces to the center of the base to stabilize and secure it to the roof. It is important that the base be level so that the center of gravity is perfectly centered.

The next step is to weld or attach an old front-wheel spindle to the center of the base. This is what the upper part of the vane will rotate on. A front-wheel spindle and hub, properly packed with grease, is probably the best set of bearings you could obtain for this purpose and will last for years with little or no maintenance. I then cut out the center of an old wheel that matches the bolt pattern of the hub. The upper part of the vane will be mounted on this, as it allows the weather vane to be bolted together into two parts for ease of installation.

Weld a short piece of hollow driveline, with the solid spline shaft part pointed upward, to the wheel center. Tack-weld a good secondhand thro-out bearing around the spline shaft that will carry the wind cups. The bearing will allow the wind cups to rotate independent of the rest of the vane. It is important to mount the cups on a ring that clamps to the bearing, either by bent tabs or bolts, as welding them to the bearing itself will warp and ruin it.