20” Champion Blower & Forge camelback drill press

[Machinitect]

I’m excited to be the new owner of a 20” camelback. This one showed up on CL a few hours from my farm, and I picked it up yesterday.

This one is in running condition, but needs some attention. Several handles are broken off and will need to be fabricated and brazed on. I may power it with a DC treadmill motor with a potentiometer. I also have a 220V single phase Baldor, but at 5HP it would be overpowered.

If it needs babbit, I have some left over from a power hammer project that I did years ago. ClappedOutBport, thanks again for sharing your Royersford project. The second you ran yours at like 20RPM with a 4MT drill I knew I had to have one of these!

 

[ndnchf]

Very cool, I love old camelbacks!

 

[Machinitect]

Here’s some progress on the drill press. One of the gears in the backgear assembly was missing a tooth. I ground out the tooth area and filled it with brazing rod to get it ready to mill out with a gear cutter on the mill.

The downfeed lever was missing one of the handles. I started with 3/4” steel rod and bent it into shape, then machined a taper for the handle out of 1” round rod. Now that is is brazed up, it looks fairly original and I’m happy with it.

Here’s some photos.