Antique Champion blower forge restoration

[AirheadNut]

I picked up a crusty Champion Blower & Forge hand-cranked blower and rivet forge last weekend. It had been sitting for at least 60-80 years from what I can tell, semi-exposed to the elements, but amazingly the blower still turned reasonably smoothly. This will be a full restoration project similar to the Champion No.98 post drill I restored recently.

The forge is a No. 45 Rivet Forge with a No. 1 blower. Looking through the 1922 and 1926 Champion catalogues the No. 45 forge came with a No. 40 blower, but mine is a little different from what is shown in the images. The only references I can find to a No. 1 blower show a much bigger, belt or direct drive blower with a motor, so this is likely an older version of the No. 45 with an early model of blower, possibly 1890's-1910's.

The plan is to fully disassemble the blower, clean and media blast as necessary, paint and reassemble. The forge will probably get blasted as a single part and painted with high temp fireplace paint. It is all very crusty so I went out this evening to start soaking all the fasteners in penetrating oil in the hopes that they wouldn't fight me too hard, and as usual I got a little too eager and decided to have a shot at unbolting the blower from its support arm. To my shock, both bolts loosened with a light turn of the wrench and came out smoothly!

Then I got really excited and started tearing into the blower.

 

[AirheadNut]

I don't know what kind of magic they used when building these things, but every single nut, bolt and screw on the blower loosened with light pressure and unthreaded smoothly by hand, almost like they had been assembled yesterday. The only stubborn parts were the fan blades and the press fit bushings for the gear shafts. The fan came off easily with a gear puller:

For the gear shaft bushings I drilled a large hole in a 2x4 and used it to support the housing while I drove the bushings out with a drift. Good excuse to use my Star Forge No. 146 post drill with an original style 1/2" shank drill bit:

Helical gears for the high speed shaft make a quiet blower:

All torn down and ready to be cleaned. This might be an easier project than I expected!

 

[aztoyman]

I love old stuff like this. Man, it's in great shape for as old as it is. McMaster-Carr might have some of that high heat packing or whatever looks like a gasket on there. Looking forward to seeing it back in service.

 

[AirheadNut]

Great point on the packing! I'll have to look into what was used on these between the blower halves. At first I thought it was a gasket but on closer inspection it appears to have been put on wet, almost like a cement.

 

[aztoyman]

I found material to reline my transmission mounted parking brake band (1950 F6) from McMaster-Carr. I saw they had stuff like your blower has when I was searching their catalog.

 

[pb4ugo]

You might look for folks or manufacturers that make or restore cast iron stoves. Some of the fitment of cast iron parts and panels are not very good and they use some sort of sealant or caulk to fill the gaps.

 

[AirheadNut]

Looks like I can get furnace cement in a caulk tube or small pot, seems like that ought to work pretty well.

 

[AirheadNut]

Haven't gotten much time on the blower recently, though I did send all the small hardware through the ultrasonic cleaner with some degreaser. The castings for the blower will be wire wheeled to remove the buildup of crud, then media blasted before paint. I started on one part this weekend just to see how it would go, it cleaned up pretty nicely. I'm using copper slag as a blast media, it is quite aggressive but works great on castings like these.