HammerDance

Interesting! I should have known that. Certainly changes the perspective

Yes, it was 1986. Before I was born . Thanks for your help!

I found that as well, I just found it odd that the catalog lists them as steel body in every issue. I’m assuming sometime in the 50’s, then, they switched to cast aluminum. It may have only been a brief switch, I suppose. At least it’s not a... forgery

I recently picked up a champion model 60B hand-crank blower. More-so to satisfy my own curiosity, I’m trying to assign an approximate date/era to this thing. I see the 60 series in all of the champion catalogs that I was able to find online, but they’re listed as weighing 22lbs. This one is about half of the weight listed in the catalog. So, was there a period of time when these would have been either fully transitioned to aluminum, or maybe for a brief time period? I’m guessing it’s either a WW2 or early Cold War effort to re-allocate steel for military use. I’ve seen a few places online listing these as a “civil defense blower” for use in bomb shelters in the 50s, but even then the catalog seems to indicate that it should be a much heavier body. Or did I manage to find an elaborate Chinese knockoff of some sort? Either way, the price was right, and it works fine. Just curious.

I knew I read that in a thread somewhere. Perfect, I feel much better

I was a tin-knocker in a previous life, so this should be an easy one. Thanks again for all of your input

That sounds like the plan. I don’t want to mess with speeds, but instead just redirect the air as needed. we got a few inches of snow last night, summer is too far off to tease myself with

I guess I see an idle blower and an idle bellows as the same empty chamber when not in use. BUT leaving the electric blower on at a whisper makes sense anyway, so I suppose my concern was moot anyway. Thanks for the input, I was overthinking it. AC it is

That was my first thought, but then I came across a thread (somewhere in here, I believe) about gasses finding their way into idle bellows/blowers, and then igniting and creating a bit of a blowout. Didn’t want to aim that at my face, but a simple backflow/check would prevent that, I guess. Scared myself out of that option at first, but now air conditioning doesn’t sound half bad. Cool! As a chronic over-engineer-of-everything, JABOD is still my favorite concept. It keeps me from trying to reinvent the wheel (in most cases).

I’ve got cheap/free access to small electric blowers from time to time that I think would be (close to) ideal for use as a forge blower. However, these will all have a little bit too much oomph (scientific term), so I’ll have to dump some of the air with some sort of bypass so that the high static pressure doesn’t burn out my motor. Simple enough. My question is, is there something useful that I can do with that excess airflow, besides just dumping it back out into the open air? Would it serve any sort of purpose in inducing draft in the flue? Or should I just use it to keep the stink away from my boots? I’ll be able to ramp these down quite a bit, but there will still be extra air to get rid of.

Cool! Thank you

10 years after the OP, the link seems to have walked off. I’m interested to see it, if anyone happens to recall where the video came from.

I hadn’t dug too deep into propane burners, I think that’s still a bit too far beyond me. I also appear to have posted this in the wrong corner of the forum, originally, as it may have been better suited for the bellows/blowers section. I think I was looking at it as more of a science question, and thought it wouldn’t have a proper home in a more mechanical-leaning thread. Sorry, guys I think I was sort of looking at it from a side-blast perspective, I should have been more specific. But when you put it that way, it makes a lot of sense.

I’d guess that I’m just shy of 2 hours south of Sugar Hill, so much closer to Brentwood. Once I get my feet underneath me a bit, but before I teach myself too many bad habits, I’ll definitely give them a shout.

As we speak. You’ll be the first to know, sir. Cheers