Hi all

One of the limitations I have in setting up my forge is electricity. I need to run the whole thing on a 12v battery and it's indoors without the ability to run a high chimney, so that will already have to power smoke extraction and lighting. So I'm looking at hand cranked blowers to save a little power on the forge itself.

And obviously, like everyone, money is tight, so I'm looking cheap. I've found these on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07K9HVTG4 and I'm assuming based on the price that they are not worth the effort of even clicking the button, but I thought I'd ask for advice as to whether they would be a workable option here.

 

Why don't you build and use a traditional double lunged bellows? I built one from water stained plywood, scrap tarpaulin, scrap dimensional lumber and it worked great for over 20 years. I preferred it to my hand crank blower and I preferred my hand crank blower to  the electric blower I started with.  The downside was the amount of space it took up---why many of them were mounted in the rafters of old smithies.

Now that's an idea. I like the traditional angle. I don't suppose you have any pictures of it? I think I remember seeing plans for a bellows somewhere on this forum.

My forge is a 10' metal shed, I could always mount it on the roof and have a chain pull system.

Nope I gave it on to a friend when I had to move my shop 1500 miles and I was already over 1 flat bed semi truck of "stuff".  Was back before all phones had cameras.  However it was based on one in a museum in Oklahoma City that was, I believe, one sold by the Sears Roebuck company 100+ years ago.  Not much to them if you get the inner valves oriented right. The way I sized mine was: I got the wood I could use and then adjusted the design for 3 solid pieces and 2 "horse shoe" piece to come out of the 2 4'x8' pieces of plywood.  The snout was glued up from 2"x6" and 2"v4" dimensional lumber and the nozzle was a plumbing floor flange and piece of 2" pipe iirc.  I used a draw knife to make the snout look "correct".  The frame to support it was made mortise and tenon from dunnage lumber. The support for the pump lever was 1/2" rope that I doubled over with a twist to "grab" the lever but I could take pressure off and move the lever in/out and side to side---I took this forge to events and so had to swap which side I worked from and needed an adjustable mount---I could pump this bellows to forge welding heats with my pinkie---did it on a bet once.