I found an old portable farrier forge in good nick for a song and bought it, couldn't help myself.
The brand on the blower is Sydney.
It is in good nick considering it is probably 70 years old, yet it has a few things I can rectify, plenty of rust is one.
I need to sleeve the blower's fan shaft since it has a lot of play and rattles at low speed making the cranking rather heavy, that is a simple fix. The rest of the mechanism is in perfect shape and well greased.
Yet the reason for this post is to find out if it is possible to restore two broken bits from the cast iron covers.
The hand cranked blower is made in two halfs, 3 really but the back cover is a bullet proof lump of cast, and they are bolted together by well ... bolts. Each bolt goes through a half ring on each of the sides and as it is rather classic in this blowers, when someone is careless and overtighten they brake. Fortunately both broke not completely but half way from the hole up so the bolt still holds the sides together. Each of the two halfs has one of these ears broken but not in the same place.
I was wondering if it is possible to make this holes whole again ... I know I can patch them up by making some sort of bracket and tap a couple of screws to the body, but that would be a rather unholy butchery. May as well leave it as it is since it is perfectly functional. I am sorry I forgot to take pictures and the forge is in wup wup, so maybe I can bring back some photos on Sunday.
However I hoped that since it is a very common occurrence with this cast iron blowers, that someone has an idea of the quality or lack of it of the cast used, and if it can be welded and how or by who. I have never attempted to weld cast before. Thickness is about 1/4" and like I said, it is a small semicircle that is missing from the bolt hole.
Any suggestions very much appreciated.
PS it just occured to me that I don't really need to rebuild the whole semicircle, I could just build up the two little stumps left, to the height of the opposite side so that the bolt head or the washer has a full surface to push against. it would be easy to shape them with a file (?)
The brand on the blower is Sydney.
It is in good nick considering it is probably 70 years old, yet it has a few things I can rectify, plenty of rust is one.
I need to sleeve the blower's fan shaft since it has a lot of play and rattles at low speed making the cranking rather heavy, that is a simple fix. The rest of the mechanism is in perfect shape and well greased.
Yet the reason for this post is to find out if it is possible to restore two broken bits from the cast iron covers.
The hand cranked blower is made in two halfs, 3 really but the back cover is a bullet proof lump of cast, and they are bolted together by well ... bolts. Each bolt goes through a half ring on each of the sides and as it is rather classic in this blowers, when someone is careless and overtighten they brake. Fortunately both broke not completely but half way from the hole up so the bolt still holds the sides together. Each of the two halfs has one of these ears broken but not in the same place.
I was wondering if it is possible to make this holes whole again ... I know I can patch them up by making some sort of bracket and tap a couple of screws to the body, but that would be a rather unholy butchery. May as well leave it as it is since it is perfectly functional. I am sorry I forgot to take pictures and the forge is in wup wup, so maybe I can bring back some photos on Sunday.
However I hoped that since it is a very common occurrence with this cast iron blowers, that someone has an idea of the quality or lack of it of the cast used, and if it can be welded and how or by who. I have never attempted to weld cast before. Thickness is about 1/4" and like I said, it is a small semicircle that is missing from the bolt hole.
Any suggestions very much appreciated.
PS it just occured to me that I don't really need to rebuild the whole semicircle, I could just build up the two little stumps left, to the height of the opposite side so that the bolt head or the washer has a full surface to push against. it would be easy to shape them with a file (?)
0 commentaires:
Enregistrer un commentaire