I'd like to hear what make electric blowers are the quietest. I might scrounge one off a junk pile for now, but eventually I'd like to buy a good one. Quiet is good. My retirement years are just beginning and I found  a hobby that has deep roots in my past work. My access to many a Buddy's scrap piles and my own have led to this forge project.  I'm going to send  air from my blower into the exhaust pipe on the hood to make a good draw to the chimney. I'll use a gate valve for my firepot air, and always power exhaust when fire is lit.  I'll have adquent fresh air ventilation beside the hood, and installed a co2 monitor.  With the blower running 80 to a 100% of the time, I'm hoping to buy a quiet one, but one with a good 'breath'.  So whats the quiet line of Blowers?

Here is were I ended today. Hood parts all on and tacked in, and the brake drum firepot got refractory cement. I have to scrouge up some pipe parts for the blower, get a gate valve,  get a blower,  and also run a blower line up into the stack on the hood for a power vent.

A quiet one is one that's far away. Pipe in your air from a blower in the next room or outside.  

Centaur Forge used to sell a blower called the PB 50, very quiet but $$.  Not sure if they still offer it.

A better hood design would draw without power assist, go with 12" exhaust pipe and read up on hood styles.

Edited September 24, 201510 yr by Judson Yaggy

I would look at the exeseory exaust blowers for hVAC and high efencency hotwater heaters. Posably the ones for exsilery exast for plet stoves. steve sells has a very nice set up that is faily quit. Myself i like the ruthem of bellows

I can't say about a quiet blower but your forge hood isn't going to draw well even with a blower assist, it's just too wide open.

If you do a look around in the the solid fuel forge section you'll see plenty of examples of how well side draft hoods work. I've never seen an overhead hood draw nearly as well as a poorly designed side draft.

Not to be critical Arbs but you're doing what most of us did when breaking into the craft. You're really over thinking things trying to design perfect tools and equipment without knowing how to use it.

You have a perfectly workable forge table as she sits. However, when the refractory cement breaks out of the drum fire pot don't use the same stuff, just pack damp clay into it. Mixed 1pt. clay to 2pts. sand and it'll do the job just as well and not heat check like the cement will.

I aught to post a pic of my first coal forge, makes yours look dainty and simple. I tend to over design things naturally, jut like I tend to over type when writing posts.

Frosty The Lucky.

The blower with the least noise I have encountered is a double lung bellows.

Your forge hood looks nice but is trying to pull in room air instead of smoke. Extend the hood so it captures the smoke and directs it up the chimney and sucks up as little room air as possible.

A bathroom vent fan works great and is very quiet (mine was at least). I built a wooden housing for mine and put a dimmer switch on it and it actually looked pretty nice. Used it for a year until I got a hand crank blower.

Keep the hood for show if you like, but if it were me I'd run the chimney down to the table, cut a vertical hole in it near the bottom, say 10"dia, turn it into a side draft. As for a quiet blower, external.

Edited September 24, 201510 yr by turbo7
More info

Thanks guys.. I will take all into consideration. The side draft is interesting.  I'm limited in chimney size for the time, I feel power drafting is a must with my small flues. I was planning on a cone vent over the whole deal, but failed to find material or a big enough cone. A shop will roll one for me if I can find some good Ga. material.  I may have to break down a buy that light metal I quess,  I'd like to go straight up thru the roof with 12"  at some point. It is what i would prefer, and will devolop as  I can. 

I have put my fans into plywood boxes to reduce the noise...a good option if you cannot or do not want to put it outside. I first saw the ones Peter Parkinson made to house the fans in the forge at Farnham Art School. They had eight or a dozen hearths going at a time and the row was awful until he boxed them.

The boxes I made were from 20mm (3/4") plywood. The fans are mounted on the bottom board and the box dropped over. The outlet pipe has a notional seal to the box, and the inlet is a slot in the bottom of one of the sides. The slot delivers into an internal flue which acts as a noise baffle. The slot and flue cross sections are around 1 1/2 to 2 times the area of the fan inlet.

i have a fractional horsepower single phase fan in one and a 1+hp three phase one in another.

Great improvement to the working environment. I thoroughly recommend them.

Alan

I only briefly used coal before moving to propane, but I bought one of those inline duct fans that's supposed to be installed inside ductwork to boost air flow - it was so quiet I actually had trouble realizing when it was running, I'd forget to choke it back or turn it off.  It was plug in, so super easy to use and install, smallish so easy to fit into standard piping to the forge.   I think it was called an inline duct booster, if memory serves ran about $30

A friend of mine gave me this Dayton blower. It's really quiet even when on full. Only thing is it is smaller. But it blows perfect for my brake rotor forge. The outlet is 2" diameter and so is my pipe diameter so it fits it perfectly. They probably make larger ones as they are a well known maker but they may be big money. I was lucky to have scored it for free. I had the plate to restrict air flow until I bought a variable speed switch.  But that's what I use and it's super quiet. 

I have one that looks a lot like that one only a lot older and marked AEC on it as it came from the "Black Hole" at Los Alamos...

 

Copy machines sometimes a blower on them too.

Copy machines sometimes a blower on them too.

So do stoves.

Good Morning Arbs,

Coal/Coke flues work best lower with a minimum 10" pipe.

May need to put a furnace forced air blower/fan near the ceiling to get rid of the smoke when you first fire up to Forge.

My electric Forge doesn't need a flue

Neil

Some smiths use a diverter to provide venchury assit to the stack till it warms up...

you hate to be the one to drop the ball on somebody that just built a beautiful forge like that and inform the person it won't work. I see somebody already did that.