Double (not Great) bellows

[Nick]

Drinking mug, got it

Thanks for all the info, it'll be very helpful when I build my setup. It'll be a while because of school, but I like to plan ahead a little.

I'll be in Leeds for a year or more for graduate school, at least one of my classes is going to be in the Royal Armouries. I'll be there for medieval history, and my main focus is the armour and metalwork of the Middle Ages, so I hope to plumb the depths of their library and archives!

I just remembered a couple other illustrations, these are woodcuts from the 15th and 16th century.

[ThomasPowers]

When I built my Y1K bellows I did not include a nozzle check valve as Theophilus did not mention them for his metalworking bellows but did for the organ bellows. "Divers Arts", Theophilus; c1120 AD

I learned that alternating the pumping just right would keep small bits of hot coals from being drawn into the bellows. The biggest problem being that you have to stairstep their inflation every time you start from zero; not hard to learn to do.

I also leaned that leaving an airgap between the nozzles and the tuyere pipe about the diameter of the tuyere pipe helped---this has been seen in pre 1000 CE excavations and was though to be an attempt to entrain more air---like an aspirated propane burner does. Calculations indicated that it didn't work well for that.

Well it worked a treat to keep hot coals from being sucked into the bellows and I have informed Rehder author of "Mastery and Uses of Fire in Antiquity" of this other use for it. (book contains a "foolproof" small bloomery plans!)

Medieval and renaissance art can be quite accurate or woefully inaccurate depending on the artist, time/place and what they were trying to accomplish.
Remember that while the illustrators *may* have the originals to work from they don't *know* blacksmithing and so important details may get left out or be skewed.

I am currently working on a 1570's camp kitchen based on representations of one in a book written by one of the Pope's cooks around then. Items are missing/inaccurate and sometimes escher-ized to show details. Mine will not be "exactly" like the drawing---mine will actually *work*!