Blower style Dry Blower build

Hi guys,

Since I used a Dry Blower last summer over in Ararat I have been pretty keen to get my hands on one and go to town. The Keen 140 I used was a great little unit but on my limited budget there was no way I was going to be able to afford one any time soon so I put plans in place to start building one. I studied as many youtube vids as my downlaod would allow and asked a few questions here on dimensions and size etc. In the end my memory helped out a lot in designing my dry blower.

Being a Fitter by trade and having access to material and tools meant I could go with building it out of Alluminium and welded with ease. Also, a few spare minutes here and there through out the work day has helped in making a few of the more fiddly bits.

Here are a few pics of the blower as it stands so far...

Fan unit


Hopper box



The riffle tray still needs welding up at this stage. I have used 2 different type riffles as used in the 140. This I hope will catch the fine stuff.
The whole thing will be going by summer where I hope to meet up with a few more PA members and do a Dry Blowing weekend to give it a good test run.

Will post more pics as it comes along,
Cheers

That looks the goods mate. Let me know if you need hand shoveling. :lol:

That really is an impressive unit. You can tell you did and apprenticeship-quality mate.
That is something to be proud of.

Where do I place an order? Awesome work looking forward to the updates.

Thanks guys...

Once she is up and running and the important bit is that it works I will look at building more. The fabric for the riffle tray might take a few tries to get right.....If only I could get the same as used in the Keen dry washers!

Once I do the last bit of welding all that's needed is a set of legs out of 20mm RHS, fix a couple of chains and a spring and she will be good to go.... Now I'm just deciding on how much to spend on the blower. $88 from Masters or a $300 Stihl unit...hmmm...Decisions, Decisions.

Cheers,

I have a Stihl that must be 20 years old and still going strong. And it had a solid use over the years. Cheap things usually become expensive.

Nice build mjb

You can get the keene fabric from reeds prospecting supplies wa

Thanks for the Tip Goldigg@, I will ring them up today and get some sent over

Beagleboy, I think you may have just convinced me to get the Stihl, you can't beat reliability.

Cheers

mate if your catchbox is the same size as a 140 you can get away with the $78 one from masters, but.... with no varialbel throttle you have to preset the throttle with a rev limiting screw. they are very thirsty too, I think you get around an 30 minutes to a full tank VS i spent $280 on mine for a few hours from a tank.

The catch box measures 450mm x 200mm. Not sure how this compares to the Keene 140 as I did not have one close by to measure up. I think mine may be a little smaller but if any one has a 140 I would be eager to know what the size actually is.

So the cheapies run flat out or idle is that correct? And the Stihl has an adjustable throttle? I reckon the ability to adjust throttle speeds is a necessity so you can minutely adjust the air flow...lest you blow the fine gold out of the box

In all honesty I would much prefer a 4 stroke unit too as it may just be a little more bearable than the 2 stroke version......but then again, Diggerdude had a 4 stroke and it was still annoying

Cheers,

bout the same mate your catch area may be a little wider. Yeh the cheapies run flat out, remember thought that DD's unit had its own issues, you need to be careful not to have too much CFM or your fan wont spin it will lock up and you get no warble. high cfm but not too high and thats the issue with some of the 4 strokes, mines a 2 but its a ripper and 78 db i dont mind it compared to the last one. http://www.mcculloch.com/int/products/leaf-blowers/gbv-345/


love the easy throttle adjustment on the side here and the kill switch is protected, kill switches die all the time on blowers

That Mcullogh looks like a ripper..I will keep my eye out for those. So that was the problem with DD's unit....too much CFM. We stuffed around with it for a bit before he lost interest and we went back and had a can
We were not too sure if it was a counterweight issue on the fan unit or the seal between the riffle tray and box was too good / not good enough.

Here is my hose that i will be using. 3" diameter which hopefully will go straight onto the end of the blower.


Cheers

that hose looks the goods mate, bi reckon you want to have a solid fitting in the end mate becasue you'll be pulling it on and off quite a bit and that wire will wear a hole in your hose. cant wait to see her in action

Looks good, can't wait to see a completed machine..

Thanks Goldigg@, Keene replacement fabric is on its way. $18 for it to fit the Keene 151...plenty to spare

Cheers

Just bought my Blower unit for the beastie.


I reckon I got the same as you Goldigg@

Anyway, I welded up the rest of the dry blower yesterday and now I just have some legs to knock up and we are away....or maybe not until things dry out a bit

Cheers

Awrsome mate if you get eager to run some material get a few buckets spread a tarp in the sun and you should have a bit to play with after a few hours. Otherwise if you're up for a long drive I know a few adits you can play in

Mate...I might take you up on that offer, I don't think I can wait till summer comes around. If everything goes well it could be fired up this weekend, that is unless my dayjob does not get in the way of my goldfever.

Cheers,

Always welcome mate. Do you have many mullock heaps around mate? You'd be surprised how dry the soil actually is 40mm down.

The spot I know in Ararat is mullock heaps, small ones but they definitely have gold in them. They are a good size for dry Blowing really. Would take about half hour to break a decent amount up nice and loose and then may take about half hour to run through the blower. That should give a good indication if its working or not.

2 weeks ago there was still no water flow through my creek over there so your probably right with what you say about the soil being dry. I can feel a sickie coming on so I can go test her out...

Cheers,