Century Open-Top

On this week's edition of "Large and in charge", we have a Century 58" 'Open-Top' ceiling fan, restored to its original gloss black finish with copper oxide switch housing and canopy (presumably, if it weren't missing). The model number is 172, which was produced between 1912 and 1915. Note that the blade irons feature decorative adornments that do not appear to be made out of cast iron but rather a nonmetallic material and tacked on to the cast iron blade bracket. I'm not entirely sure they are original, along with the solid beech blades, which have rounder bottoms and at 3/8" thick are basically boards. But if they are factory original components, that would indicate to me that this fan was made closer to 1912 as later 172s have been found with standard 3/16" thick blades with squared off bottoms and Century's signature plain crescent blade irons that have the design stamped into them. The switch knob was remade out of Bondo; when I found the fan, half of it had broken off; my solution was to cover it in Bondo, let it harden then, machine it down using my Dremel, then paint it black to resemble the original black bakelite. The snap switch had to be rebuilt as well as it was skipping low speed. Unfortunately, shortly after I finished filming this video, it failed in spectacular fashion, so it now exists only for decoration; the fan has since been hot-wired to high speed, which I don't mind because if I were to ever install this fan, I would just leave it on high anyway and use a solid state control to dial back the speed. All things considered, I'm incredibly happy with how the resto turned out and am over the moon to finally have one of my personal holy grails.

[@FANtasticFans82]

They don’t get better than this!

[@JAX207CFS]

Wow, that thing got restored amazingly. Ultra-powerful too!

[@whoisthisguy724]

Century literature of the day claimed that this fan was more powerful than five 16" desk fans combined. From my tests, I'd say that claim isn't too far off

[@JAX207CFS]

@@whoisthisguy724 Interesting!

[@Rockfan12-v3j]

Good god, where did you find this?! Very nice 👍

[@CFE-A3s]

Niiiice, an antique!

[@whoisthisguy724]

I want to say this is the 12th antique I've found, including duplicates. And at least so far, my favorite