What blower for a medium size tatara style smelter?

Dan Seaver

Dan Seaver

Joined
Jun 25, 2007
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898
I took a break from my smelter project but now that there is nice weather I'm going to be firing up the new tatara. I have access to unlimited iron rich sand and I can make up to 200lbs of charcoal every other day. Sooo, I'm basically set to run my tatara but I'm not sure what I should use for the blower. I need something that can run for 6+ hours without issues and can move a large amount of air. The inside of the tatara is about 10"x16", so it needs to be a large blower. Any suggestions?

Thanks
-Dan
 
At wal mart and k mart they sell these inflatable water slides and bounce houses and such. They come with rather large blowers set up for continuous duty. They move huge amounts of air, as they are designed to keep these playsets inflated at a given pressure despite the vent constantly letting air out. My mother in law had the waterslide version set up over two summers, running sometimes 10 hours at a whack, and the blower is still going just as storng as they day she ought the thing.

The only real downside to one of these things is the price tag. Last I checked, it's $100+ for the playset.
 
Hmm I have a 6hp shop-vac that I've been considering using since I saw a picture of you using one for your tatara. I guess I'll give it a try.
Mr. Zawazcki, I will look into those blowers; if I'm lucky an online store will sell just the blower instead of selling it as a set.

Boilermaker I can get my iron sand from the black river (its black because of the high iron content) or from a local sand quarry. The quarry sand doesn't have as much iron but it is far easier to get the sand and iron from there. If you know of any rivers near you with very dark or black water you could use a magnet to test the sand. You can separate most of the iron by using a strong magnet and then a fine mesh screen because the iron is very fine.

Thanks for the help.
 
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