DIY blacksmith bellows from paper bags 

When you replace the bellows craft paper, instead of painting the bags for decoration, melt beeswax and lightly coat the paper in it. Both sides while the paper is flat. Use painters tape to keep the areas needing to be glued free of wax. Not only will this make your craft paper more airtight, it might just help protect them from wearing out as quickly.

I love the way you make the wooden pieces fit together without screws or adhesives. Its definitely a sign of good carpentry skills.

A very impressive build. I had the exact thoughts of a number of other commenters here. Waxed paper or waxed canvas seem like good alternatives. You might be interested in one of the recent videos on primitive technology. The guy figured out a way to make a bow powered unidirectional impeller forge blower out of clay, sticks and leaves capable of smelting iron.

Dude! Fuigo(Japanese box bellows) is much simpler to make and amount of air you can blow in forge is astounding. You can make those in any size too.

FWIW, I once salvaged a lot of wonderful, supple leather from an old bomber jacket I bought secondhand. I used it to make many small leather pouches, decorations, and leather thimbles for myself. I felt almost bad for cutting up the beautiful jacket, but it was full of holes and not really wearable anymore. It was a great investment of a few dollars for many years worth of crafting supplies!

You should get a good whittling knife, pocket knives work well enough but cutting green wood can make it crack later on. Plus they're just fun to use

hey man, i got a tip for you. i stumbled upon a recipe for a very nice airtight sealant on my diy chemistry voyage. just melt 4 parts rosin and 1 part wax together, to apply just heat and drip on the leaks you want to seal. it adheres to pretty much anything, even glass. for anything that isn't subjected to heat, awesome stuff really.

Pretty good work! I would just like to make one suggestion - when carving concave curves, flip the chisel bevel down, it works much better that way.

in place of leather make your bellows with a tarp

8:21 Cat Spotted!

Awesome video but I have two recommendations for you to increase the longevity of your bellows. 1 sew the bellow over the glue seam, 2 use leather or another natural cord to sew the paper to the wood boards, those nails will eventual blow out the cardboard since it's uneven pressure but a running stitch through the boards and the wood would give you even tension and hold the paper tighter. After you do a running stitch on one side you would probably have to use a loop stitch similar to what a sewing machine uses to secure the other side as their wouldn't be enough space to use a running stitch. I hope this helps. :)

I recommend checking out leather shops near you if you want some scrap leather as well (not just ones that sell hides, but places that make and repair boots, shoes, jackets, etc), because they often just throw away the off cuts, and you can get them for very cheap or sometimes free, and are preventing more landfill waste

I would recommend the Japanese wooden bellows (Fuigo), mostly wood and only greased felt or leather to seal valves and around the shaft and piston

this is like a relaxing retreat away from all the modernity

This is a great channel, leaves me in awe of those old timers and what they could do.

Fantastic! Simple, made from materials you had at hand - Exploration just doesn't get any better than that!

also your friend sounds great. Putting walls up in a workshop must have taken a while :)

A great tip when drafting and you have multiple distances that are the same lenght use a compass. Set the distance on a rule between the pecile and point. Then you can swing an arc of your distance and then move the point to your mark. Or if you have a line of symmetry you can mark boths sides the same distance of it by having the point on the line and rotating and marking both sides

Interesting channel and unique videos. Thank you for your contribution and hard work

wow nice work and very interesting, I hope to see more for you! you deserve a lot more views

Very impressive!

Nice work ❤

What can be done to make the bellow last much longer, something I have seen in historical ones, is to laminate the paper with some fabric. Something like skin glue would have been used historically, but a flexible when dry modern glue like PVA should work well too. Cotton or another natural plant fibre would be preferrable as they soak up the water based glue much better as well as stick better once dry. Then paint the fabric side which goes outside to make it look nice and protect it from the elements. And iron the resulting material flat. That way one gets the relative air tightness of the paper with the resistance against reapeated folding and friction, overall more resistant to wear really, of the fabric. If you know those notebooks that have fabric spines, it´s for the same reason as fabric laminated with paper stands up to reapeated folding really well where just paper tends to just fall apart after relatively little time. Some acordeons also have a bellow made from material like that. If one wants to make it even more resilient, a paper made from cotton or hemp fibres would work a lot better than one made from wood fibres as the softer, longer and more flexible fibres dont break as easily as wood fibres do. That can last decades if glued with care and cleanly, as well as not being abused and treated with care.

8:21 Kitty! :D

I promise I'm not giving you a hard time and am being sincere. Imagine if they had had collapsible black and Decker workmates :) I know they had rough equivalents at certain points but still. You could be a king with one of those in short order.

Good channel man. Keep doing what you're doing and you will go far. If you didn't do anything else you would have done a lot. Keep Building Fraser. Bless you and anyone else who reads these words. Peace. Later.

i have never wanted more for someone to flop a chisel over and use a bevel down cut

Watching you whittle that makes me think you should invest in a farriers rasp.

You could refill your blowpipe with that bellows too.

Great video! Have you made the follow up video? It would be a shame to not see how they perform, even if they fail it would be good to know. Thanks for your wonderful content, keep them coming you really have something to contribute to RU-vid!

8:31 KITTY!

the pencil used at 5:09 says much of character

What about something such as dryer vent

So which video is it used in now that its been a year

The paint probably makes the paper a little more air tight...

I've seen you talk about bellows a lot but have never heard the mention of using cow stomach or any other organ tissue. Why?

tnt #2023 made a great bellows out of dead window blinds and ducktape

I realy like yor videos but you can make them more fun to watch by adding some music in the quiet parts.

i love this guys channel, especially the fact that he has never pronounced "forge" correctly

furge

wow all that work for something made of paper at least pick up some roadkill and make them out of leather if you don't want to buy some leather

find an old leather jacket, man. all the bikers that survived are in the nursing homes. try indiana or ohio first. those places are just fucking awful, gotta be full of bikers.

Mate, you need to mount your camera away from the bench you’re working on. The jumping and jiggling is a real pain to watch. Otherwise, good job on the bellows. Will be interested to see how they hold up.