cere19

I actually fired it up yesterday for the first time, it worked pretty good and I was able to bend a straight piece of rod for the handle on my forge. I still need to weld it onto the forge, I made this so that I can wheel it outside when I want to use it there's no way I'm running it in the attached garage. I don't have a great anvil yet, I have a section of railroad track that I got from one of the intro to Blacksmith instructors but I haven't made a stand or anything for it yet.

I never realized that it would crank the other way, I'll just have to move the piece that the blower sits in to the middle of the end or cheated a little bit to the other side and it will be good. Thanks Frosty

That's good advice from the both of you, after reading the responses I went out and tested it out. Troubles is I'm left handed so I use my left hand and setup the blower to crank with my right hand. Thing is though the blower itself I feel is designed for right handed people and feels goofy to crank with my left hand.

Worked on it today and believe it's ready for it's first fire. The blower puts a good amount of air up into the pot thru the tuyere. You can't see it well but the 1/4" round rod coming down just above the ash dump handle is the clinker breaker handle.

Wow this project got put on the side burner while building a house and now getting back to it. Hopefully I have it up and running shortly and not another year and a half break. Got the basic shape of the forge stand built and bolted the tuyere on. I need to finish the clinker breaker which will be attached to a rod that goes thru the channel I ground out in the tuyere's top lip.

If you want a custom hammer but Ken doesn't have it check out Jackpine Forge. He is out of Northern Minnesota and I know he makes hammers for Ken. I got a rounding hammer from him when I was starting out and love it. When I took my intro to Blacksmith class I lost the head off my handle so I used the instructors rounding hammer from Jackpine. I liked it so much I bought it and received it before the next class because I needed a new hammer being mine broke. I like the hammer and it seems really good quality.

I'm planning on using coal from the local guild, they have a pile at the school of horseshoeing that I took my intro to Blacksmithing Class at. I looked at Ken's Custom for classes but they were filled up and I wanted to start learning right away. Maybe in the future I'll head up to a class up there.

I've made some progress on my forge in the past couple of months, here's some pictures of the updated progress. I was able to drill a 2-1/2" Diameter hole in the bottom of my firepot as well as the piece of plate of my tuyere that will bolt to the bottom of the firepot. I also drilled and tapped 4 holes in the bottom of my firepot for the tuyere to be bolted up from the bottom. There's also a picture of my tuyere welded up, you will see there's a slot I ground in the tuyere mounting plate. I'm going to run a piece of 1/4" round through there for my clinker breaker handle. My clinker breaker will be one of the hole slugs that I drilled out and ground down for approximately 1/4" gap around the outside of the clinker breaker to the edge of the hole in the bottom of my firepot. I need to make brackets and fab the ash dump at the bottom of the tuyere next time I work on it.

I got it all apart today and got all the old grease cleaned out. I think it was worked on before because 2 screws for the gears cover were hex head. Also on 2 of the shafts it looks like they used shim stock to take out any slop. Overall it appears to be in good shape and should go back together good. I also noticed one of the fan blades was closer to another fan blade so I bent it back slightly too make the spacing even, it might've been bent enough towards the outside that that was the noise of the blade hitting the case.

Well I bought it for $120,it's heavy and spins pretty well. One thing I noticed is the fan blade has play in it because it was hitting the inside of the blower case. I split the case last night and the fan blade shaft has some play where it goes through to the gearbox. I took the handle off as well and pulled the gear case cover. Both sides had a lot of old pretty dried up grease, I'm going to work on cleaning it up and see about getting it apart. I have a couple screws as well as the fan blade stuck on the shaft. I will be using pb blaster and giving it time to do it's thing to work it's way in. One thing I did notice is both on the fan blade where it mounts to the shaft as well as a part in the gearbox they are both missing a set screw to hold them in place. I'll take some pictures as I have more time to work on it.

I was thinking 98 was the year it was made as in 1898. It looks like a larger size blower. Looking at pictures of Buffalo blowers on the internet the smaller blowers have a fixed length for the crank handle. Where as this one has an adjustable handle length.

Thanks Irondragon I was planning to try and get him lower on the price. I didn't even realize it was missing the stand which is a good point. Does anyone know what model this blower is?

Found a Buffalo Forge hand crank blower on Craigslist the guy says it spins. What do you think would be a fair price for it? He's asking $150 and I'm planning to meet him after work tomorrow.

Thanks for the suggestions for the clinker breaker. I was leaning towards one but that just solidified it. I was thinking along the same lines by cutting a round hole and then putting the handle right at the top of the tuyere. Just need to figure out what size to make the tuyere now. Also need to figure what type of material to make the clinker breaker out of and how big to make it.

Plate is 1/2" thick while the top lip is 1/4" thick.