Primitive Technology: Water powered forge blower

Primitive Technology: Water powered forge blower
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About This Video:
I made a water powered forge blower to blow air into a furnace. Getting running water to power a blower had been on my list for a while now and the weather had been wet enough to cause enough flow in the creek to try one. A significant part of the labour in doing an iron smelt comes from the operation of the air supply (unless natural draft is used). The current air supply method I use was a hand powered, centrifugal fan encased in a housing as seen in previous videos.

I had a 2 ideas as to how to automate this with water power. The first method was to build a large, slow water wheel and run a rope belt around it linking it to the smaller, faster fan rotor to spin it. I tried this and it kept having issues due to the rope not spinning the blower effectively and also the fact that the water level changed and the wheel stopped moving.

The second idea was to use a small diameter water wheel directly connected to the fan rotor with a water spout dropping the flow onto the wheel at a height. This turned out to be the simplest and most effective of the methods with rotor speeds between 6 and 8 revolutions a second being attained. The then encased the fan inside the existing blower housing and tested the blower on a furnace build in front of it. The blower did indeed work though not as powerfully as a hand powered one.

With some adjustments, the blower may be improved so it becomes competitive with the hand powered method. The water powered method will go endlessly without human effort and does not wear out any rope as does the hand powered method. It's simple and reliable and I'll be doing more experiments with it in future.

00:00-00:23 Wet season and Furnace
00:23-01:26 Toy water wheel
1:26-08:59 Design 1, Large wheel, belt drive and fan
08:59-16:14 Design 2, Small wheel, direct drive fan
16:14-18:44 Fire by friction
18:44-19:48 Igniting furnace, last minute adjustments
19:48-22:33 Testing water powered forge blower

About Primitive Technology:
Primitive technology is a hobby where you build things in the wild completely from scratch using no modern tools or materials. These are the strict rules: If you want a fire, use a fire stick - An axe, pick up a stone and shape it - A hut, build one from trees, mud, rocks etc. The challenge is seeing how far you can go without utilizing modern technology. I do not live in the wild, but enjoy building shelter, tools, and more, only utilizing natural materials. To find specific videos, visit my playlist tab for building videos focused on pyrotechnology, shelter, weapons, food & agriculture, tools & machines, and weaving & fiber.

#PrimitiveTechnology #water #forge #fire