The blower looks like a champion-type blower (with a sheet-metal volute instead of a cast housing) but it’s really hard to tell from the pics. Champions are geared and have considerable intertia, so that you can let go of the crank and pick up the work piece before the air cuts off.

The blower pics are a little frustrating. It’s like a picture of a cool home-made car that only shows the steering wheel and tantalizing glimpses of the rest of the rig.

–Charlie

My beef with these arguments is that the ore hasn’t somehow vanished – it’s been made more accessible than ever. Considering that a single junked car probably contains more good metal than a wealthy iron-age town, I can’t see how it would be difficult…

I wish someone would do a detailed interview, how-to, on the reliability aspect. I WANT TO KNOW! how they’ve arranged things to get good reliability, like the furnace bellows.

Technique matters, and clearly they have that.

I rant and rave and try to teach about thinking and making reliability all the time. It’s a discipline and a way of thinking. People here are hung up about “products” when they should be thinking of doing things for themselves.

You can find a local chapter, or independent blacksmithing organization somewhere in your region, all over the states, Canada and a lot of the Western world. Blacksmiths on the whole are extraordinarily generous about passing on the craft.