Bellows

[KMADDOX]

Here is a pic of a nice supposedly original old bellows that was a barn find by the main smith in this shop. Located at Deanna Rose Childrens Farmstead in Overland Park, KS. He is in process of restoring it as you can see, unfortunately he wasnt there to actually chat with.

[ThomasPowers]

Yup looks like the commercial ones sold by Sears Roebuck in their catalogs.  Looks like a nice job restoring it and will probably be great to use.

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

 Very nice! 

[KMADDOX]

TWISTEDWILLOW i thought it was, very cool to see. 

ThomasPowers the lady hammering yesterday said the air pipe goes all the way to back in it and it is basically 2 chambers that you can use 1 or both. I figured it was probably a commercial use as big as it was. 

[George N. M.]

Longbow:  It appears to be a 2 chambered or great bellows.  These are an improvement over the single chambered type because they give a constant draft rather than puff, pause, puff, pause.  You work the lower chamber with a lever and that inflates the upper chamber which in turn exhausts into the forge.  The lever keeps putting air into the upper chamber.  Sometimes the weight of the upper wooden part isn't enough to provide enough pressure and a weight is put on the top.

Sometimes, you will see two single chamber bellows blowing into a single forge inlet to provide a similar constant blast effect.

Fairly simple in concept but getting the valves and weight balanced correctly is more subtle.

IIRC, the great bellows was first introduced in the late middle ages.  Some of them got to be very large.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[KMADDOX]

George thank you for that info! I love learning all the history that many of you guys here share all the time!

[ThomasPowers]

As I recall the double lunged bellows came into blacksmithing from the smaller ones used by goldsmiths around the 14th century.  Paired single lung bellows were more common in smithing for over 1000 years by then and continued in use as seen in "De Re Metallica"  where water powered ones were used for smelting metals.  If properly used you don't need a check valve for paired single lunged bellows, one exhaling while the other is inhaling.

As you can see in that picture the middle solid board is what is connected to the frame allowing the bottom one to drop and fill by gravity and the top one to rise as the top lung is inflated by the bottom one.  Looking at that one again I would guess that the leathers were cut from the originals not taking into account that the originals have shrunk quite a bit as they aged.  I'd put a couple more inches in each one.

[natkova]

 I will sugest bellows that' are not shorter than 90 cm /3 foot  without nozzle, and wide 2 foot and half 75 cm.

 

And also nozzle hole need to be adjusted to chambers, you cant make big hole if chambers  have less capacity of air, if you do that, your top chamber won't  lift properly and you will have useless bellows.