Stopped by a forge in rural Pennsylvania that still uses a 200 year old bellows

Was driving through Lancaster county last month and saw a sign for a working blacksmith shop. The guy inside, name was Hank, had this massive leather bellows from the 1820s that he still uses for his main forge fire. Said it gives him way better control over the air flow than any electric blower he's tried. Has anyone else worked with old bellows or am I just behind the times?

4 comments

4 Comments

sarahh481mo ago

Oh come on, is it really that serious? It's just a fancy old air pump, not some lost ancient art form.

jake1911mo ago

My buddy actually restores old gas pumps for a living and he says the internal leather seals on these things are cut by hand. The way they form the bellows and the specific taper of the brass valves changed between 1925 and 1927 and if you mix those parts up the pump won't hold vacuum. So yeah, theres a lost art to it even if it looks like just an old air pump from the outside.

taylor_flores1mo agoMost Upvoted

Dude, one of my buddies totally nerded out about this at a party once and pulled out pictures of these old pumps hes restored. The detail he went into about the leather seals and the way you have to cut them yourself was wild, like watching some old school craftsman type of thing. He said the same thing about the 1925 vs 1927 valve taper being a deal breaker too, and that if you get it even slightly wrong the pump just leaks all over the place. It's crazy how something that looks so simple actually has all these hidden rules and tricks that are basically just passed down by word of mouth now. Makes you wonder how many other everyday things from back then are like that and we just have no clue about.

alex5241mo ago

Wait, hand-cut leather seals inside those things? That's honestly blowing my mind right now.