Did somebody say "Antique Fans"?



My first love, even prior to Mercedes!!
This laptop doesn't have my pics, but I've got a zillion pics of awesome fannage. Very akin to our love of these Mercedes, at least the older Mercedes. Refreshingly mechanical!!
Surviving from the turn of the last century.
Don has a Westinghouse there, and yes, the blades are a type of bakelite. Micarta actually I believe.

Not me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1yXeHZKWqk

Westinghouse is very hard to restore. Stamped steel bodies. If the head wire breaks, which most have by now, it is almost impossible to get the windings out of the stamped steel head. But not impossible.
Westinghouse is one of the fewer manufacturers whose blades rotated counter-clockwise. Love em. At least the micarta blades don't get bent out of shape like steel/brass/aluminum. Uh, but they do shatter......

Emerson made the best massed produced fans. The absolute best product from just before 1900 through the 60's. It is almost universally accepted that the Emerson 77646 is the best fan ever produced. Not for beauty, but operation and longevity. Mine is blowing on me as I type.
You can get lost in antique fans, and the THOUSANDS of amazing and different examples.
The AFCA is a great organization. Sadly, their forum is now a "paid-forum". Much debate went into that decision. It is a first class organization though. You can still see the fan galleries.
http://www.fancollectors.org/gallnew.htm

Fairly cheap on ebay too for many-a-fan......
I am down to about 65-75 fans now. Lots of projects to get to. And now, I don't have much else "old and steel" to work on.....

A very few of mine. (not a good selection. Need to find where those pics are stored....)





not mine





Funeral parlor fan:



Got me fired up......

__________________
Jimmy L.
'05 Acura TL 6MT
2001 ML430 My Spare

Gone:
'95 E300 188K "Batmobile" Texas Unfriendly Black
'85 300TD 235K "The Wagon" Texas Friendly White
'80 240D 154K "China" Scar engine installed
'81 300TD 240K "Smash"
'80 240D 230K "The Squash"
'81 240D 293K"Scar" Rear ended harder than Elton John

I love the fans that look like food dehydrators, very funky lookin

__________________
hum.....
1987 300TD 311,000M Stolen. Presumed destroyed

There is a fan museum in Wichita, Kansas inside the Vornado Fan factory. It is out on the east side of town and is open to the public.

The oldest one there is a wind up from the 1800's that is supposed to go into the center of your table during meals. It would rotate and keep the flies off of your food.

The advertisement for it says that now your servants no longer have to stand over you to shoo away flies!

This is also an early example of a machine taking over someone's job.

If you can get a long enough extension lead it looks like you could nail it to the back of a boat and skip over swamps.

__________________
1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!

I was just trying to remember when bakelite emerged on the scene. It seems there was a signifigant gap until plastics occured after that. The cord is period correct for the time. I too was suprised on the composition of the fan blades.

Good find! My Aunt used to beat us with those hotwheels tracks. Try it on your kids works well.

FYI, you can get nice cloth covered line cord. I'd be replacing all the original wiring, it probably (had) rubber insulation (which has fallen off).

-J

__________________
1991 350SDL. 230,000 miles (new motor @ 150,000). Blown head gasket

Tesla Model 3. 205,000 miles. Been to 48 states!
Past: A fleet of VW TDIs.... including a V10,a Dieselgate Passat, and 2 ECOdiesels.
2014 Cadillac ELR
2013 Fiat 500E.

I heard that my fan was a pain to restore. It works fairly well but needs to be greased.

Do you have any fans you are looking to get rid of cheaply? I'd like to get into restoring these and or preserving them. I've always had a thing for antique fans. I need to get around to checking out the antique shops around here. I scored my fan in a shop in CT. I should have bought the Emerson next to it for the additional $10.

When I was hitching through Argentina in 1977 I saw a kerosene powered fan in an antique market in Buenos Aires. It didn't have an engine you lit a wick and the heat powered a gas/liquid cycle much like the old natural gas powered Servel acs of the '50s.