Blacksmithing
and Cutlery
by Gérard HEUTTE
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Blower from a vacuum cleaner engine
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All is in the title! To carry out a forge, you must have a blower. Buying a specific blower
a heavy investment (count from 200 to 500 Euros)... One can make without! This article
presents a technically satisfactory and more cheap solution.
Principles
For a forge blower, the two factors to be taken in account are (1) the air flow
(2) the pressure
There are several solution to that problem: Large reprocessed fan, hair drier, bellows
(European traditional or Japanese) and the vacuum cleaner...
You can get easily an old vacuum cleaner and
extract the blower from it. The unwanted junk provides an
inexhaustible source! The breakdowns of the vacuum cleaners are
often elsewhere localised than on the blower. Very often, it is a problem of electrical contact,
connections of pipes...
The blower is in general easily removable. Think to get also the flexible tube which can be
used as connection between the forge and the blower.
It is necessary to extract the blower from the vacuum cleaner.
In general, it is often encumbered of dust, clean it with pressurised air. Check the anti-interference
capacitance. In case of doubt, remove and replace
it. Attention, do not to buy this type of component in the stores
of household parts where they are out of price (20 euros).
To test the blower by connecting it to the main supply.
Attention with starting, the blower can roll or move to a significant
degree!
Realization
The first problem to be solved is to get
the air and concentrate it towards a pipe. For that,
the blower will be fixed in a cone. You can use the higher part from a water bottle
of 5 liters. Place a flexible joint (for the insulation of the windows) around the
body of the blower. Connect the electric wire by
the junction of this joint. Split the bottle to introduce
the blower there. Crimp the result with a flexible collar (colson).
A metal or plastic tube will be stuck or inserted into the
level of the neck to connect the pipe to it. The unit will have
funny look  , but it is effective!
Here is a sketch with the principal elements.
Installation
You can associate to this blower:
- A speed variator for drilling machine.
One can buy one in a do-it-yourself store. There are
kits in the electronic stores for about 15 euros. A
variator for hallogene lamp can also be appropriate. Thus you can regulate the air flow.
It should be noted that this
type of blower is not designed to be controled through a variator, you can get
some little odd noises under operation!
- A switch setposed on the ground close to the forge (controlled by foot), makes
possible to blow air (with the flow
regulated by the variator) only at the time of heatings. You can save some charcoal.
Opposite, the blower (hung under my U-Shaped forge) with
on the ground the speed variator and the foot-switch.
The main disadvantage of this type of blower is its power, in
general too much high. It is also rather noisy, but less than
the duet hammer and anvil!
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