I can't remember what possessed me to start accumulating early electric fans, but I've got a few nice ones.  My first one (seen below) was a Westinghouse with steel blades, that I restored and painted the blades with a brass paint.  It's an 8" fan, and moves more air than most 16" fans.

I've recently found two nice Emerson ceiling fans, including a "fern leaf" fan which needs moderate restoration.  One of the fans had only two walnut blades with it, but originally had four.  On the other fan, one of the blade arms is broken, so in order to restore both of these fans, I need three blade arms.  They look like this:

I also put these two pictures up of one of my favorite fans from my collection, which I restored last summer.  It's a 1901 GE pancake that I bought about 3 years ago for about $60.  It was in horrible condition, but as you can see, it's quite a looker now.  It works great!  Total restoration time was about 50 hours.  I don't use it though for two reasons:  1)  those two brass knobs you see on the lower portion of the fan are exposed electrical terminals that you screw the bare wires onto -- I doubt it would pass the Underwriter's Laboratory tests for safety these days; 2) I have a young son who could easily lose a digit or three because the cage surrounding these powerful, metal, sharp blades is more decorative than effective.

And here's a 30 year supply of projects that I've purchased, but haven't begun the restoration on.  There's a few really nice fans awaiting their trip to the buffer on these shelves (and tables and floors).


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