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Need help with off the shelf flange


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I recently purchased a centaur forge firepot and elbow assembly. It came complete but I need to plump it to my blower. I am going to hove to make a flange and pip to connect to the bloer. I was wondering what most people use or do they make their own? I have material but no clean way to cut a hole. So I was wondering if there was an off the shelf part like an exhaust flange that I could weld some pipe to. I thought about using a 2 inch black pipe flange but I was not sure if this was too small for good air flow. thoughts?

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Greetings Stove,

 

All you have to do is roll up a 6in piece of 20 g and stick it in the hole..  You can also get a connector at Home depot made for 3in galvanized.  Good luck and have fun with your firepot..   I have 3 and been using them for years... Good luck

 

Forge on and make beautiful things

Jim

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Well I have a champion hand crank blower, but I found a leaf blower at a yard sale for 5 bucks( I thought it was a good deal) that sucker blows a typhoon. I was going to put a dimmer switch to tune it down. I like the champion blower just because its low tech and has with old school cool factor. but it is a work out and its a chore to work it, rake coal and hold long stock at the same time.

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Well I started out with an electric blower and moved to a good hand crank and then moved to a great double lunged bellows and after a decade and facing a 1500 mile move gave the bellows on and am back to the hand crank.

 

Have you looked into an automotive heater blower?  Much quieter  and 12 volts DC is not an impossibility to come up with in a shop---not to mention you should be able to use a simple rheostat to adjust the output on it.

 

Others have used vent fans from bathrooms, cooling fans from copiers, or my favorite the exhaust boost fans from super efficient furnaces---a good HVAC place might give you one from their bone pile if you explain what you are trying to do with it.

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There's a good chance that your hand-crank is just gummed up from a hundred years of oil dying in it.  I'd strip it down as much as possible and hit it with a ton of carb cleaner or the like.  See how easy it turns after it's been cleaned and lubed again.

 

Mounting an electric motor to the handle shaft is entirely possible.  The only caveat is to be careful of the RPM's being delivered to the gears in the casing.  Hand-crank gearing is designed to greatly increase the speed a human can turn the impeller.  Hooking that up to a motor that's already turning 1200 RPM's would have the fan turning @ 50,000 RPM's, depending on the gear ratio and pulley size.  That could be an instant disaster!

 

Another idea is to hook the handle up to a foot treadle.  A piece of quarter-inch round stock going down to a 2x4 would be more than enough to get you spinning and leave your hands free to rake coal and hold long stock until you can make a stock holder.

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