IronFlower Forge
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A quick (and dirty - especially after it goes into use on a coal forge) way
to create a powerful, quiet, and cheap power blower is to scrounge up a hand
blower with bad gears. I've typically been able to buy frozen or coffee-grinder
blowers* for approximately $15 (I've got mine, and it's not my fault if the sellers
read this and figure out that they ought to ask for more). As an example, the
blower shown to the right was originally a Champion 400. Once you have the blower, remove the fanhousing (and fan), and throw away the gear box (Ok, put it somewhere 'safe' just in case you need some parts somewhere down the road). Find an approximately 1800 RPM motor (one of the ones pictured here came from a badly rusted, mashed squirrel cage ventilation blower and cost me the effort of picking it up and throwing it into the truck). Also find or fabricate a motor mount and a plate to bolt the fan housing to. I again lucked out by finding several bases in the dump, but angle iron would do just find. I fabricated a bushing to increase the diameter of the motor shaft up to the internal diameter of the fan's hole - because I have a lathe. I could of just ordered the part from MSC. And that's it - a quiet, cheap blower. I've found that the best way to control the air flow is with a blast gate - two slabs of wood with a 16 gage steel liner open to one end, two 3" pieces of light pipe, a 18 gage steel slide with a handle, and a mounting board and/or bracket. Tie the blower to the gate and the gate to the forge with aluminum dryer flex hoses and a couple of radiator clamps, add a switch to the system, and you're ready to fire up. The details of all of this ought to be visible in the pictures to the right. * coffee-grinder blower = one that sounds like a coffee-grinder chewing on gravel |
 
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