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Posted by spaco on September 10, 2007, 9:50 am
Please log in for more thread options My wife found the picture we took in 1999 after I convinced myself that
we didnt' take one.
See it here: http://www.spaco.org/FootPoweredForgeBlower.jpg
I left it pretty big so you could see what the guy is selling, too.
Sorry that the forge is hard to see with all the ironwork in front of
it, but that's the only picture I have of it.
We played a dirty trick on this guy. There were 44 blacksmiths on
the trip. We were all watching him forge. we asked our interpreter
to tell him that "44 Master American Blacksmiths are watching you". The
poor guy turned white and became really embarrassed. Of course only
about 1/2 of us were MASTER blacksmiths. But he shouldn't have felt
bad, his work was pretty good and he had his customer base figured out
quite well, we thought.
Anyway, if you look closely at the picture, you can see that there
is a crankshaft with about a 2 inch stroke and a treadle driven by the
guy's tennis-shoed foot. There is a strange shape covering the 12
o'clock to 3 o'clock quadrant of the large pulley. I think it is some
sort of shield, but you get to decide for sure.
It is not my intent to build one. One of our master blacksmith is
having off-hand shoulder problems from the tongs and many years of
cranking the forge blower. (He will not use any modern tools). I just
wanted to offer him an alternative that would take some of the pressure
off his shoulder for a while.
Chilla wrote:
> I remember seeing one of those, are you going to build one?
>
> <http://www.britannica.com/eb/art-5542/Buffalo-Forge-Co?articleTypeId=1>
> <http://www.americanartifacts.com/smma/advert/ay149.htm>
>
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/yourplaceandmine/topics/myth/A762167.shtml>
>
>
> You could scavenge an old treadle sewing machine and a Buffalo Forge
> Blower, maybe.
>
>
> Regards Charles
>
>
> spaco wrote:
>
>> I am looking for a picture or drawings for a foot powered forge
>> blower. When in Prague in 1999 we saw one at a festival in the old
>> town area, but I didn't get a picture of it. The blacksmith's forge
>> was a very lightweight affair with what looked like a treadle powered
>> sewing machine mechanism driving the blower. The blower was run by
>> one foot since the smith had to be standing when using it.
>>
>> Any help would be appreciated,
>> Pete Stanaitis
>> -------------------------
>
>
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