The Blower

Here is what the blower looks like on the bench. It's pretty rusted and pitted. The two halves are held together with machine screws and nuts which are completely rusted. The fan is on a shaft held in two plain bearings. More on the bearings later.

The pits are deep, but this thing is made of HEAVY cast iron. Plenty of meat still there, no worries about pinholes.

Here you can see that the mating fit between the halves is not the best - there is a lot of some kind of filler material in there.

I will Dremel off the screws and split the halves and see what's up.

The New Forge

It has been a long time since I initiated this blog. Now I have something to talk about!

Let's follow along as I rebuild the "Pump Handle" forge I found on Craigslist. Here is a shot of the forge. This is a Champion Forge and Blower, with a "No. 2 blower". The pump handle operates a dog clutch apparatus to grab a drum at the center of the large drive pulley, via a leather belt. Then there is a longer belt to drive the blower.

After the blower there is a transition duct which directs the air to the forge pan, and on the bottom of that is a trapdoor to allow the clinkers to be dropped out. This transition piece will need to be cleaned up as well.

If you look closely you can see a small orange handle, that operates the "clinker breaker" which sits in the opening to the pan, you rotate it to break up the clinkers and let them fall out.

I'm going to pull the blower off and see what's up, clean it up and paint it, then I'll pull the "drive mechanism" off and do the same. Stay tuned.

I found out where to buy coal (Federalsburg, MD) but it will be a while before I fire up the forge. Still have work to do.

Here are some more shots of the beast.

The First

Let this initiate the blog, December 28, 2008. Let us go forth, and multiply posts...