These old flat belt-driven devices show up on occasion. Heavy and awkward, with too many handwheels, levers and cranks etc. for me they're too much work to hook up to a motor and try them out. And what is that escapement device on the top face gear in the image below? One day I will actually spend some time to experiment with one. This one is from Champion Forge and Blower, this well-known maker of blacksmithing machinery was founded 1875 by 17 year old Henry Keiper to manufacture the rotary forge blower he had invented. They started manufacturing drill presses by 1889; the first models were hand-powered post drills.
These drilling machines were popular in the early part of the last century, electric motors and self standing drill presses replaced them.
3 comments:
The notched top wheel with hinged paw is your power feed --stroke is adjustable one tooth or two depending on the drill size .
The horizontal wheel at the top of the press feeds the drill bit toward /into the work
As a child I figured out the function of the top feed wheel and deduced that I could use it's mechanical advantage in place of an arbor press (which we did not have on the farm) and quickly learned the greater lesson that cast iron, while MUCH stronger than my soft human hands, was NOT unbreakable.
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