Originally Posted by Mowerfreak
That looks like a turbocharger. I take it the "snail" is operated by a hand crank to pump air that stirs up the heat.
Yep, it drives a centrifugal fan via a step-up gearbox, so it's not necessary to crank it very hard to get a lot of air blast.
A night shot of it fired up;
[Linked Image]

Pic without use of the flash;
[Linked Image]


A pic of the finished tool [a fire rake], that's shown being heated in the pics above;

[Linked Image]


Cheers,
Gadge

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