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I Forge Iron

My new restoration project


SmithingWitch

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My recent restoration/upgrade of a buffalo forge post drill is coming along fine and I figured I need another project to keep myself busy with and to make sure I dont get *too* much actual work done. I was poking around an antiques place around central North Carolina where I found this in a barn.

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Well actually I had seen it there before in a different barn, thought it sold, re-found it in a different barn on the property and finally after passing it by a few times picked it up. Its in rough shape but aside from the leather being shot, the wood is actually in decent shape albeit dry. Ive disassembled it all, and as the nails holding the upper and lower boards are loose enough to see daylight between boards Im drilling and doweling them back together as I go. The hinges which were 100% seized when I got it came loose after heating them up toasty with a torch and running some wax into the joint, and the nozzle block despite looking like a pincushion should be fine once I pull a few tacks and hit it with some filler. And have to rebuild the nozzle but that shouldnt be too tough, thank goodness I had some great tutelage under a tinsmith a few years ago. 

From what Ive seen in research it looks very similar to ones apparently made by sears in the late 1800s but for some reason there seems to be a piece of old leather that was tacked across the back side of both the top and bottom boards, from the horizontal brace back. I could understand why on the top, to give some grip to a weight set up there and maybe to stop it from damaging the wood or the seams between planks, but does anyone know why it would have been applied to the bottom in the same configuration as well? theres even remnants of very patient tackwork in circles around the two intake valves. 

Im confident I can restore the wood except the intermediate ribs which seem like they were cut out of old crate wood and didnt hold up well. That shouldnt be hard to replace though. What im at a loss for though is once I go to re-skin this thing, whats the best way to set it up so I can tack the leather on in the right place? 

Also if I wanted to use new wooden bands around the outside of the leather, would I basically have to steam bend something like a moulding strip?

Ill admit I got it in part because I couldnt bear seeing it lay in the dust in a barn and if nothing else could use the knowledge of how this one goes together to build my own, and turn this one into one of those "designer" coffee tables once it wears out in my forge, but theres something about the breath of a bellows that makes it an almost meditative experience. Id like to mount this in the rafters and have a forked inlet pipe to allow air either from this or from a centrifugal blower depending on workload and fuel. Any tips tricks or suggestions appreciated. 

 

 

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Think about white oak splints like they use for baskets, green will bend on their own or dried you can steam bend them. Molding often doesn't have the grain going the correct way to get good bends.

When I leathered my bellows, (using tarpaulin material), I placed the bellows on it's side opened up the distance that would be the max and starting at the nozzle end, applied the nails on all the pieces working my way too the middle of the back. Then I flipped it over and continued from the middle of the back down to the nozzle.  I was using new wood and so didn't have an issue with nails holding.

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Ill look into using splints. Having taken apart the whole thing (and seeing how filthy it was inside) I managed to salvage what I could of the leather to use as a pattern. it seems like the upper and lower chamber were done in two separate pieces overlapped at the fixed middle board. So that might make leathering it a little easier as I could only struggle with a *large* piece of leather vs a gigantic one. Also after trying to pull some of the old rusted tacks out of the nozzle block and marring the extremely dry wood ive changed tactics: if the small tacks wont pull loose easily I snipped the head off and drove them down below the surface with a nail header. I let the block area absorb a bit over half a pint of wood hardener tonight and given how dry it was it seems like it soaked it up readily. Now fill the areas that need it and when re-tacking just take extra care not to nail into the same spot as an existing nail, by checking with a magnet. the upper mobile boards seem like theyll be ok once fixed back together but im kind of debating between just replacing the one warped section on the lower or recutting them altogether. Id hate to do extra work for little reward on this. 

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Any idea how I would go about extrapolating what it would have been/needs to be compared to the shrunken state now? I had thought of taking parts from the widest and narrowest sections of both the top and bottom leathers and getting them good and oiled in neetsfoot oil, then pressing it out to get a measurement, and once I had some numbers use that to determine how far to space everything. I guess its not an extremely precise science but I dont want to use more leather than I need or cheat myself out of potential volume. 

In other news, I fed an entire pint of wood hardener to the nozzle block and center board, applied filler putty on the block where there had been som gouges and knots lifted out, and my the difference is amazing. It went from feeling like dusty balsa wood to something old but solid. I still need to cut a couple little chunks of pine and glue them in at the sides where the blocks lost some material and hit them with a draw knife, and hammering in some jute to the seams probably wouldn't hurt but I'm cautiously optimistic about the integrity of this thing where I had my doubts before. 

The upper board has been totally disassembled and all tacks and nails pulled from the planks, they will be reassembled with dowels on the butted joints and hopefully will be reasonably level. Again the same idea of jute wadding between cracks and filling the nail holes applies here. Theres one plank on the bottom board that's warped that I'm going to see if a woodworking neighbor of mine could make a quick copy of, then Ill take an unwarped section of the original board and replace the missing segment behind the valve hole visible in the original picture. Sadly though the ribs between boards look totally shot, they are poorly aligned sections of old crate wood it looks like so not a big surprise. I plan to get a couple pine boards and cut out some new ones that should be much sturdier. 

After that I guess all that's left is to forge a new hook to pump the lower one, make a nozzle and put it all back together. (and straighten one of the iron prongs its made to hang from)

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10 hours ago, Irondragon ForgeClay Works said:

Have you tried wetting the warped section and putting weight on it to straighten it out? I've had success doing that several times on projects. If you have a way to steam it that works even better.

I can try, the warp is there on the back side of one of the intake holes in the photo, as you can see one section is gone altogether and the other has a bit of a twist, and once all the other boards were doweled together and aligned (they were very loose with the only connection being the horizontal span they all were nailed to) the twist became more pronounced. I could try soaking that end and leaving it in an old cast iron book press for a day or two though and I doubt that would hurt anything. The woods so dry though im not sure wetting wouldnt make it worse, and while Ive been having good success with brushing on wood hardener I dont want to do that first lest i make it too rigid to be worked. 

In todays news, Ive taken all the tacks out of the upper board, which came out much easier and with fewer marred spots and tearouts than the lower, doweled the planks together and theyre currently gluing. I left them unclamped and instead just ran glue in the holes and a bead down the edge, as theres a little bit of a warp and slightly less than parallel cuts in the wood so ive laid it out on a relatively flat table and clamped bits of scrap wood around the edges to keep the pieces going relatively level. I can sand and plane the top a bit if it looks too ugly once Im done. As for gaps Im taking the tried and true approach again and using some glue and hemp cord I frayed up a bit and will pound in between cracks once the glue dries. Better than any putty filler when you need air tightness. Also might run some glue soaked linen along the inside joints. 

 

All in all this is a huge project for someone without any but the most basic wood working tools but im learning a lot and figuring out ways to make my own bellows to my own aesthetics and size needs for when i go to tackle the next one. 

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update on the project, after dealing with the condition of the wood and realizing the amount of hardener Id need to stabilize this, Ive decided to just get new wood and build a new bellows using this as a template and then I would know the wood wont fail on me a couple years down the road. Im glad Ive got this though as it lets me actually get my hands on something more tangible than drawings and pictures. 

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Thats my thinking, plus I can put a couple hatches in for easier access and I can *know* the wood is in good shape vs trying to stabilize what isnt great to begin with, and having it crap out on me in a couple years. Plus this whole projects got me looking back into side blast forges for a more traditional setup being easier and cheaper to build than a bottom blast one as I can get soapstone for a hearth block easily. 

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