Hello all,

I've recently gotten back into blacksmithing and on a travel back home to see my family I noticed an old forge my brother and his wife were using as a planter.  I asked if I could have it and he was kind enough to give it to me.  Now I have an awesome old forge that needs some cleaning up (removing planting soil from it) and I was hoping to get some tips from everyone here, after you have a look at it.  It looks like the blower is belt driven, so I have a small motor I'm going to conned to it and the blower turns, just needs a little cleaning.

Any words of advice are greatly appreciated!

 

 

Typicaly there was a fly wheel and a handle you pumped or a flyweel and crank handle. I like the quit and the rythom of hand powerd air. Very Zen

Hope you grabbed some of those apples while you were there.

 

A lot like my little rivet forge. What are you going to be burning?

 

A lot like my little rivet forge. What are you going to be burning?

 

Not quite sure what I'm going to be burning yet, any suggestions would be helpful.  I'm getting ready to take some classes at a local blacksmith shop here so hopefully I'll be learning more about what I should do with this thing.  Any chance I could see a couple pics from other angles of your rivet forge so I can see how the blower works?

well... at a much slower speed than typical motors is what I'd say...

Yep, going to need a reduction set up to run it with electric, might as well fab up a hand oowers set up or build a new tuyeer for an electric blower (say a bed or pool inflotor from walmart) wile you sort out how to adapt the original blower. Thinking big pully from a swamp cooler...

I was thinking about a hand crank run from a bicycle gear set up...

I like your thinking. Maby a round peice of plate or a fabricated wheel for a flywheel. Always nice when the air keeps going as you fiddle around rounding up your tools and brushing the scale of the anvil. 

Here's a couple of better views of the blower mechanism:

But this wasn't working very well, so I jammed the hose of a shop vac set to Blow up the ash dump: