I just bought an old Candy Otto blower. It's like my hand-crank, but it has a belt-drive pulley on the side.

Anybody use one or have any experience with one?

I'm considering a simple configuration; the blower and a 120v motor mounted on a board... speed control, maybe a foot switch.

What is the best belt type/material and where can you find a motor pulley to match?

Thanks,

Don

I have two belt drive blowers, they are however original setups from long ago. One is mounted to the bottom of my forge that is in use with a lever to ratchet system driving it. The other is much larger with the drive still being a lever and ratchet but on its own stand and everything which would them be connected to the forge VIA piping. Both of them use flat leather belts. The kinds of pulleys that are on my blowers and drives are very simple and could easily be made.

My Rail road forge uses a pump handle arrangement that has a belt drive and fly wheel. I found that a rein from a horse bridle worked well. I stitched the belt with staples cut from paper clips. It has worked well for 5 years.

Here's a belt driven blower I have. It's just a fan on a shaft.....in a cast iron housing.

I don't use it much because it puts out air like a leaf blower.

It has a 2 inch flat belt pulley on one side and the shaft extends through the other side to accept a pulley there also.

When I do use this blower, I just use a washing machine motor and a v-belt on the flat pulley of the blower.

I usually have the whole thing assembled on a piece of 2 x12, but for now it's just in storage.

Most of the old electric blower motors were in the 500-800rpm range so putting a new motor on one is likely to blow the clinker breaker out of your forge.

Frosty

These big ones were designed to run several forges. It was common for a large shop with jackshafts to set up a blower on one end of the shop and plumb to all of the forges. Each work station would have a damper to regulate the blast but the blower was big enough to run multiple forges all at once.

There is nothing wrong with driving it full speed with a motor and using a damper to choke the blast. Just use a 120v motor and an On/Off switch.

I have an old buffalo forge co. blower that is similar to jayco's. Since you're designing the motor attachment, you can control the fan speed with the pullies you choose. Use whatever belt type that will work with your pulley sizes. I'll be using a v-belt and pulley on the motor to drive the flat belt pulley on the fan. When calculating speeds, the v-belt pulley size should be measured at the bottom of the v-belt, since that is what touches the flat pulley. Even with a ~2" flat belt pulley, there are small enough stock v-belt pullies to reduce the speed enough from a 1750 RPM motor so that you don't need a jack shaft. With a jack shaft, you can probably pick any speed you want. I'd aim for 800-1200 RPM.

I considered a sewing machine foot pedal for speed control, but I don't think it'd last long on the shop floor. An air gate is easy enough.