Antique Electric Fan – Emerson 24646

I am an artist living in New York City and a couple of summers ago I became interested in antique electric fans. The city was in the middle of a heat wave and my air-conditioner was roaring in my small 8′ X 10′ bedroom. I was a bit hot and probably bored too because I just kept looking at my air-conditioner and thought about how ugly it was. I lay there in my bed thinking that there just had to be a better alternative and maybe an electric fan might be the answer. Yet, all the electric fans that I have seen were all ugly pieces of plastic, including the one I had in my closet which I refused to bring out.

Here is a little more background about me. I live rather sparely; some would say monastically. My walls are pure white with nothing on them and my wood floors are stained a dark shade of walnut. In my small bedroom I have a very simple bed and a little rosewood modernist dresser to the side with a vintage machinist task lamp on top. These sparse furnishings are rounded out with a Plycraft Cherner chair from the 1960’s. If I were to add an electric fan to my room, it would have to be beautiful, solid, simple, and have clean lines. So my journey began in search of a beautiful vintage electric fan. I remembered reading about an old Vornado electric fan in the New York Times many years ago and thought this would be a good place to start searching on the internet. My Vornado search quickly turned into a search for all antique fans. There were fans with polished brass blades. Really? I didn’t know that. Rather quickly, my idea of a perfect fan evolved into this: I wanted a fan that one might see as the archetypal picture in the dictionary. It had to be reductive, have nice proportions, convey the essence of a fan without florish, and follow the tenet of the Bauhaus: form follows function. Hence, a couple of weeks later, I discovered an Emerson 29646.

I found the Emerson 29646 on a website dedicated to the restoration of vintage fans and, also on this website, I found a link to the AFCA. I logged into the AFCA as a guest and I sent a message to the first person I saw, Mark Goodrich. He wrote me back and was kind enough to include his phone number, so I called him. Mark was nothing but helpful with me and suggested that I contact Steve Stephens for a crash course into the world of antique fans. I got more than I bargained for. I called Steve Stephens to ask him what would be a reasonable price to pay if I were to purchase and restore an Emerson 29646. Steve was very amicable but he quickly questioned my understanding of the 29646. I did not know anything about fans mechanically and I was strictly drawn to the 29646 from a visual point of view. Steve started talking to me about hubs, struts, oscillators, and other models including the 24646 and the 27646. Really, other models existed? So my crash course began, and what an education it was. The following are general guidelines as to what the differences between the 24646, 27646 and the 29646 Emerson fans are. Like most fan companies, the production dates of each model is somewhat blurry. Also, many of the parts from previous models were used in subsequent models, so as definitive as I’ve tried to be, there are exceptions:

24646
Introduced – 1917

24 (model number), 6 (60 cycles), 4 (number of blades), 6 (radius of blades)

1. Smaller diameter base.
2. Cast iron hub.
3. Cast iron or forged steel handle.
4. Brass or steel cage.
5. Harder to find than 27646 and 29646.
6. Three different "oscillator mechanisms" were used throughout the 24 cycle. Early models made with alloy (pot metal) ball-detent.
Later models made with steel oscillator mechanisms.
7. Nicer looking numbers are cast on the base showing the three speeds.
8. Flat brass blades – no curvature.
9. Stamped lead-filled badge on early models. Etched badge on later models.
10. Screw-in nickel plated brass oil-hole cover.
11. Porcelain speed-control switch.
12. Single positional hole in ball joint was used for both desk and wall mounting.
13. Rubber feet instead of the felt bottoms on the 27 and 29 fans.
14. No matching non-oscillating model (non-oscillating 19646 used older step base instead of cone base).

27646
Introduced – 1919

1. Larger flared base.
2. The 27 is more common than the 24 but much less common than the 29.
3. Maintains the cast iron or forged steel handle of the earlier models.
4. Black painted stamped steel hub.
5. Steel cage.
6. Early bases used the nice cast speed indicator numbers. Later models use depressions for stamped gold printed numbers.
7. Blades are still devoid of the "dull brass finish" (brass paint) that is used on the 29 models.
8. Flat brass blades – no curvature.
9. Etched badge.
10. Screw-in nickel plated brass oil-hole cover.
11. Early models used porcelain speed-control switch. Later models used phenolic composite speed-control switch.
12. Phenolic composite grommet is coupled with a brass or steel extension on rear motor.
13. Two different positional holes in the ball joint were used for desk and wall mounting.
14. Felt on base plate.
15. Matching base non-oscillating model (26646).

29646
Introduced – 1922

1. Same larger flared base as 27646.
2. The 29 is the most common of these fans.
3. Small handle on early models. Later 29’s used a stamped steel handle.
4. Brass (gold) painted stamped steel hub.
5. Gold printed speed indicator numbers on base.
6. Steel cage.
7. Etched badge on earlier models and "Built To Last" badges on later ones.
8. Early versions made with "dull brass finish" (brass painted) blades. Later versions used black painted steel blades.
9. With the "Built to Last" badged fans: flat brass blades replaced by "improved" Parker curved blades.
10. Higher efficiency motor.
11. Press-fit nickel plated brass oil-hole cover.
12. Thick phenolic composite speed-control switch. Later models used thinner composite speed-control switch.
13. Later versions have a removable plate where headwire enters motor (making for easier headwire replacement).
14. Two different positional holes in the ball joint were used for desk and wall mounting.
15. Felt on base plate.
16. Matching base non-oscillating model (28646).

The above is just a guideline mapping the generalities common to each fan type. It has surfaced since writing this that even amongst the same model of fan, that there are variations here and there. One thing is for sure; I didn’t learn all of this at one time. Much of it was learned later on as my journey to find a text-book definition of a fan continued. Through my research, however, my allegiances were starting to shift. I ended up ditching the idea of purchasing a 29646 and decided instead to purchase a steel caged 24646. In almost all respects, I felt the 24646 was the superior fan. The 24646’s narrower base was more harmonious to me (though some have said that this base is less stable than the larger flared bases on the 27646 and 29646). The 24646 was also made with a cast iron hub instead of the stamped steel hubs of the later models and used rubber feet rather than felt on its base. The 24646 is also a far rarer fan. Now that my decision was made, the next step was to purchase the fan and so off to Ebay I went. It took a bit of time actually for a decent 24646 to come up for auction but once it did, I purchased it. I had originally wanted a fan with its original paint and beausage, however, this fan wasn’t in the best condition so I knew that I was going to have to find someone to restore it to its original glory. When I brought up the idea of restoring this fan to Steve Stephens, he gave me a suggestion; why not leave the fan untouched? What? Certainly, Steve and I had different ideas of what "beausage" meant, yet with his suggestion, Steve instantly became a more interesting and colorful individual than I had originally thought (and we have since become good friends). Nonetheless, I made up my mind and I had to stick to my guns. I had to restore my Emerson 24646. With this decision made, Steve told me that there was this restorer, by the name of Kim Frank, who has done some of the best restorations he had ever seen. Enough said, Kim Frank was the man for me.

Like everyone else I have had the pleasure to talk to in the AFCA, Kim Frank was generous in spirit and was more than willing to restore my 24646. More than that, Kim was willing and patient enough to put up with my obsessive compulsive desire to restore this fan to its "historically accurate" condition. First things first, I became a member of the AFCA. Once I did that, I started posting all sorts of related threads for this restoration project.

There are several issues that I sought out answers to. First off, I wanted to paint the fan as accurately as possible and so the idea of japanned vs. enamel paint came up. It seems that earlier in fan manufacturing, say the pre-teens, that a real asphaltum based japan was used to paint fans with (to this day, I have always felt that to do a chemical analysis of paint on fans from the earliest inception of fan making through the 1920’s would be a real asset to the fan community). As it turns out, my 24646 was manufactured either in late 1917, but most likely in 1918 (the earlier 24646’s had brass cages and later moved to steel cages). By then the terms, "japan" and "enamel", seemed interchangeable. According to the catalog entries of this time period, my Emerson came with, "polished black enamel". When I talked to Kim Frank about this issue he said that when he removed the original paint from the fan for the restoration, he would take notice of how the paint reacted. If the paint had a brown tinge to it, it was probably an asphaltum based japanned finish. It turned out that the paint did not have this quality. So as far as we could tell, the finish was some form of enamel.

This find was very informative and it helped me decide on what to paint the fan with. Whatever the original enamel was used on the fan, I was certain I wanted a single-staged enamel paint job. I felt, looking at other restorations, that to put a clear coat over enamel was not only historically inaccurate, but the clear coat had a way of visually "freezing" the paint underneath. A single-staged enamel had a more relaxed quality about it and it was not as shiny. Furthermore, a single-staged paint simply looked like the finishes that were on all the fans from the time period. With this decision out of the way, it was time to address the issue of bluing.

Once again, this is where Steve Stephens stepped in. With his help, we went over every little screw, nut and bolt. Since this was my first restoration, I did not have any fans to analyze. Steve had many. It was difficult to tell which screws were brass, which were painted black, and which were blued. Through this investigation, it turned out that almost all of the screws that looked like they were painted black actually did not have any black paint on them. Instead, all of the screws in the following areas were blued: cage, ball detent lever, and gearbox (one discovery I made was how much I loved the many blued fillister head screws on this fan). Even the bolt in the ball joint was blued. The one exception to the blued screws is that the steel wing screw in the ball joint was painted black. In the end, I found that the only exposed brass were the four acorn screws holding the struts to the front of the motor housing and the four rivets on the motor tag. This is where Kim Frank was also instrumental. He was willing to go the extra mile and blue the parts that I had addressed. This project was getting closer to being finished but I wasn’t quite done yet. There were a couple of more questions I wanted to know.

One of these questions had to do with all the other brass parts that I had seen on other restorations. For instance, I had only seen the brass oscillator arm buffed and polished. As much as I loved this look, it was not historically correct. It took a bit of conviction on my part to paint the oscillator arm with black enamel (it seemed like a sin to paint such a beautiful piece of brass) but this is the way it came out of the factory. I was afraid too, since this was a moving part, that the enamel would eventually flake off. In order to avoid this problem, I decided to leave the bearing surfaces of the arm devoid of paint while the rest of the arm was painted. This may have been what Emerson did at the factory. The other brass parts that were painted black at the factory were the ball joint and the directional pin on the collar (it was far easier for me to decide to paint these pieces). The steel wing nut on the ball joint was also painted black. As it was turning out, there was so much black on this fan that it was starting to scare me. I had no idea what it was going to look like in the end but I really wanted to press on with uncovering the past on this Emerson 24646, no matter what.

This leads me to an important point. The more I researched, the more I realized I was tapping into history. It was all starting to make sense. 1918 marked the end of World War l and our nations resources were depleted. It seemed obvious to me that, at the time, brass was falling out of favor. Polished brass was either too garish or too precious to use in a fan. I was starting to see why my fan was solid black. It reflected this more somber and sedate time period. For me, it is very moving to think about these fans as a testament to our nations state of affairs; the soldiers that sacrificed their lives and the people who worked tirelessly in the industries that supported our fragile economy and war efforts. I realized that I wasn’t simply restoring a fan, but that I was brushing off the dust of history and bringing the efforts of living, breathing people to the present. It was beautiful. With these thoughts firmly and reverently implanted in my mind, I had one more question; what should I do with the brass blades?

According to the catalogs, the blades were lacquered. I talked to Kim and Steve about this and in the end I decided not to lacquer the blades. As far as my efforts have taken me, this is the one aspect of the fan that is not historically correct. Though I appreciate that lacquer protects the blades from premature tarnishing, I also know that, eventually, problems do creep in. Since the blades on the fan take the most abuse, the leading edges of the blades are the first part of the fan to collect dirt and grime. Also, with so much air moving over these edges, it is where the lacquer wears away the quickest. In addition, the lacquer crazes over time on the rest of the blades. When this happens, tarnish immediately sets in on some parts of the blade, but not on other parts. Since the blades are lacquered, the blades are impossible to polish and bring back to its original state without stripping the blades of the lacquer. This is why I decided, in the end, not to lacquer the blades. Though my decision is not historically accurate, I was willing to compromise on this one point and it is a decision I am glad that I made. Now, whenever my blades are tarnished, it is very easy for me to simply clean and polish them up.

The restoration of my Emerson 24646 was coming to a close. All I had to do was wait for Kim Frank to finish the project and send the fan to me in the mail. When I finally received the fan, it would be an understatement to say that I was very happy and pleased with the results. Kim, as everyone knows by now, does such a stellar job with his restorations. I was initially afraid that all the black surfaces would render the fan boring and homogenous. Instead, I found the play between the surfaces rich and subtle. I would not change a thing. Furthermore, there is something else that drew me into the Emerson fans from the very beginning. I just love the shape of the Parker blades. Herbet L. Parker patented the blade design in 1899 as a way to move air more efficiently and quietly, yet, I was initially drawn to these unique blades for an altogether different reason. Together with the "S" wires on the cage, the design and curvature of the blades signifies movement, even when the blades are at a standstill. In addition, I find the badge to be one of the most beautiful that I have ever seen. The subtle crackled pattern, the Parker blade silhouettes, and the font that Emerson used for its name is all very elegant and understated.

All in all, the restoration was everything I expected and more. I have now lived with the fan through another New York summer and I had the chance to run it every day. It runs smoothly and beautifully. For the first time, I did not have to put my ugly air conditioner in my window but instead, had this wonderful antique fan, with all of this human history behind it, to cool my nights. I am deeply grateful. In closing, I would like to thank everyone for helping me make this project come into fruition, especially Mark Goodrich, Steve Stephens, Bill Hoen, Bill Voight, Tom Newcity, Russ Huber, and Jim Daggs. Together, your expertise and knowledge have been instrumental. Also, I would like to extend a special thank you to Kim Frank. Your exemplary craftsmanship and willing patience, Kim, made this restoration possible. Next up: a Veritys Junior Orbit.

Posted by davidhunternyc on 2010-01-25 19:09:46

Tagged: , antique electric fan , electric fan antique electric fan electric fan