Another project

Not up to learning to cut gears, starting with small finicky ones?

If you can get the shaft out as a bare item, could you weld up the teeth and trade favors with someone who _can_ cut gears?

Or if you're really lucky, you could find a mating gear to put onto the shaft (assuming you don't have to cut away too much of the shaft to do it).

Tim , I have no problem cutting straight cut gears . In fact , a couple of the gears in my lathe QCGB were made right here by yours truly as were the gears in this 9:1 reduction set .

Helical gears are an order of magnitude or two beyond what my tooling will do . I have no way to rotate the work in synch with feed .

I would check ABANA websites...many local groups across the country. Might want to google the manufacturer of the blower and see what ebay has for sal e. I look under "blacksmith tools" on occasion. I would think there is a pi n holding the gear to shaft. Best of luck.

You wrote "helical" and it turned into "bevel" inside my head. Probably because I'm an engineer doing accounting (1st day of the month is Billing Day) -- trying to do financial stuff always scrambles my brains.

I wonder if someone over on the Gearotic forum might be willing to help

The blower was made by Belknap Hdwe & Mfg Co , which means it was made between 1907 and about 1940 - and I was mistaken , it was originally the neighbor's great-grandfather's . The mfr is out of business and I can find no reference to their making forge blowers . The gear is definitely not pinned , the minor diameter of the gear is the same diameter as the shaft . It's looking more and more like I'll be doing some delicate TIG welding ...

That sounds a lot like a Buffalo No.200 "Silent Geared" blower.

The gear system looks pretty damn close , do they still make parts for these ?

Toss a couple pictures up. There are folks who make parts for specific ones but you need to know who's blower you have.

The Buffalo company is still around BUT they don't carry parts for the old blowers.

I looked at those last night . I'm not sure how much he really wants to use this , I think he just wants it to work so that he can use it if the need arises . Probably a big part of the wear is because the bushings are totally shot . I'm going to address all the other issues before I decide whether I'm going to attempt repairs on the gear itself . Since I have no idea of how many hours this thing has on it , that gear may outlast Randy ... If that gear weren't helical I'd just machine a new shaft ...

Can you replace the other helical gear?

-jsw

Those old hand-crank drill presses are kick-ass and they work well.

This is the perfect opportunity to ask the little lady if you can buy a metal-sintering 3-D printing machine. ;)

I can probably replace it with a straight cut gear ... but I won't know for sure until I get the gear box apart , got a couple of stuck screws I don't want to bugger up .

If you don't expect to use it a lot you might be able to build up the gear with a torch and brazing rod, although TIG is nice for free-hand sculpting.

Perhaps you could take an impression of the other gear rolling against a warmed wax or hot-melt glue blank, mold a negative of a tooth on it in fireclay and use that as the mold to fill in the worn teeth. Even

-jsw

Here's a story I wrote last year about Buffalo tube benders. This one was used in the restoration of the Statue of Liberty:

That was the first job I shot with my (then) new Sony NEX-7 camera. It was love at first click. I have a better flash setup now than I had then.