Yup. A guy brought me one of those to repair once. He wanted THAT gear
fixed. It looked as though years of soaking in oil had the paper
"leaves" separating. I suggested he get a metal gear.
I worked for a company that constantly designed gear trains with
plastic gears to reduces noise. They ALWAYS failed. We ALWAYS replaced
them with brass or steel.
There are a couple of inherent advantages to the hand cranked blower.
1. When you quit cranking, the fire goes down so you are a LOT less
likely to burn up parts. Especially for folkd just starting out.
2. You may use a LOT less coal. Our guys estimate that training
classes with electric blowers take twice as much coal in a day.
A 3rd advantage is that, with the blower only working when you do, the
fire pot may not get as hot as otherwise, reducing the likelyhood that
overwatering the coal will crack the firepot.
There are plenty of hand cranked forge blowers that DO make a lot of
noise. Back in the late 1970's, Alex Bealer, a writer and "reviver" of
blacksmithing, held a sort of "blacksmithing conference" for a bunch of
art students somewhere down south. They had the whole event filmed.
Most of the audio on the film was those old blowers going
whine-whine-whine-whine----- with every turn of the crank!
I'd think twice about electrically powering that blower. The bearing
surfaces probably aren't up to it.
You might try posting this over on alt.crafts.blacksmithing, also.
If you are going to get into a little blacksmithing, go to
www.abana.org
(the Artist Blacksmith Association of North America) and look around for
your closest affiliate blacksmithing group. They are pretty nice folks
to contact and get all sorts of help and info from. I belong to 4 of them.
in western Wisconsin,
Pete Stanaitis
---------------------------
Up North wrote:
I have finally decided to set up my old forge. I have a Canedy Otto
Manufacturing, Model H Western King hand crank blower that came with this
shop built forge. The blower seemed pretty stiff to turn so I disassembled
it expecting to wire brush and lube the gears inside the case. To my
surprise one of the gears was made from fiber and I think it is paper. I did
a little measuring and found the gear to be 1" wide, 40 tooth, 16 pitch and
I think 14 1/2 pitch angle. I think this gear is paper to reduce noise but a
plastic gear might serve the same purpose. To repair this old blower would
be my first choice. I have looked at a few gear vendor sites but haven't
found this gear but I did find this 1/2" wide, steel gear that looks to be
the right dimensions otherwise.
McMaster Carr 6325K19
Steel Plain Bore 14-1/2 Deg Spur Gear 16 Pitch, 40 Teeth, 2.5" Pitch
Diameter, 1/2" Bore
In stock at $29.22 Each
I have also been thinking of mounting a 1800 rpm motor on the blower and
scrap the hand crank gearbox. The other option would be to find a suitable
blower with an electric motor already mounted. Ideas? comments?