Todda133:
Welcome to our forum. There is (or was) a reprint of the Champion catalog of 1909 or thereabouts. I got it thru Centaur Forge some few years back. That reprint has the complete catalog lineup of the post drills Champion offered. Champion seemed to play 'mix n match' with their post (or wall) drills, offering the same basic mainframe casting made up in several versions, some with the quick return, some without, some with tight & loose pulleys for lineshaft drive, and on it went.
The full name of the manufacturer is "Champion Blower & Forge Company". I have a Champion forge in my own blacksmith shop, a 30" x 40" riveted steel hearth pan with their "Whirlwind" firepot and 'Famous 400" 12" blower. I've got a Champion lineshaft driven grinder, and a couple of Champion post drills. I use the forge, but the post drills and grinder are gathering dust. Champion was a prolific builder of blacksmith shop equipment in the form of forges, blowers, firepots, wall drills, tire benders and tire shrinkers/welders and a line of thread cutting tap and die sets. As time went on, Champion got into building what is known as the "Camelback" type drill presses, as well as offering small 'screw cutting lathes' and lineshaft driven grinders. They saw the handwriting on the wall and knew it was time to start offering equipment for automobile repair garages. Champion, at one point, must have easily had about 16 or 18 different models of post or wall type drills. Their lineup of tools and equipment varied as the years passed.
Champion, in the catalog reprint that I have, really played up the 'quick return' feature on some of their post drills. Their byline was something to the effect of: "just think of it: the drill returns as quickly as snapping the hammer of a gun." They made somewhat inflated claims as to how much a shop's productivity would be increased by using one of their post drills with the quick return feature and the handlever feed. Back then, their advertising was given to some pretty wild exaggerations as to how perfectly their forge blowers and drills and other equipment worked. I use my Champion forge quite regularly, and while it certainly does the job for me, I can't say the blower is 'noiseless' or 'perfect' or an 'heirloom' to use some of Champion's prose.
The post drills ranged in design from very simple to complex, and in size and weight from something weighing maybe 90-100 pounds to some models weighing close to 500 lbs. In the days when there was no electricity and no light-duty drill presses (the kind with round tubular steel columns and V belt drive to the spindle), a post drill was a great thing. It definitely beat trying to push a drill thru steel (or wrought iron) using a hand ratchet drill and 'old man' (a kind of post that you bucked the feed screw of the ratchet drill against), or using a breast drill or even a hand brace. As time went on, people who had the old post drills often adapted them to be driven by electric motors. I'd run into this sort of thing in older country garages and equipment repair shops. The old post drills, used with the 'turned shank' twist drills (also known as "Silver and Deming" type drill bits) were used to drill larger diameter holes in occasional jobs. Champion had a socket type of arrangement on the spindles of their post drills which accepted turned shank drill bits with a flat on them. Champion advertised this simple thing as a stroke of engineering genius on their part.
Interestingly, at the time Champion was in their heyday of making post drills along with the forges and other smithing equipment, the Morse self-locking tapers were in fairly common use for drill shanks and lathe centers. I have a Barnes camelback drill in my blacksmith shop dating to around 1885 which has a Number 3 Morse Taper in its spindle as original equipment. The world knew there was something a lot better than a post drill and the turned-shank drills by that point in time, but the post drills hung on for blacksmith and rural shops. I could have mounted one of the post drills in my own blacksmith shop, but had to ask myself if I'd really use it. I work in the smith shop to get work done, not run a historical re-creation. Cranking a post drill to push a succession of larger diameter bits thru steel is not something I need to be doing.
Years ago, a mechanic I knew sold me some smithing tools that had come from his father's blacksmith shop. They closed the shop in 1952 when this fellow's father had died. The shop had never had electricity, and had a Canedy Otto forge with "Western Chief" hand blower, a Peter Wright Anvil, and a Champion post drill. I got all of that equipment. The mechanic told me he hated that post drill when he was a kid. He said his father would take on jobs to build ornamental steel fences and other stuff requiring drilling lots of holes. They used the post drill. As the fellow told it, the shop floor would be deep in chips, some blue from the heat, and he'd be cranking away all day on the post drill. After his father died and the shop was closed, he took the post drill and put a V pulley off a roto tiller on instead of the flywheel and drove it with a washing machine motor. He also had a mandrel made up to fit in the socket chuck on that drill, with a regular Jacobs drill chuck on it to take smaller and plain shanked bits.
I've had that post drill for 35 years sitting in corners of garages in houses we've lived in and never used it. I even got two Champion new-old-stock flywheels for the post drills at a yard sale. Never changed the V pulley on the post drill back to the correct flywheel. My wife bought another Champion post drill for me at a yard sale, thinking it was something I needed. It also has been sitting in another corner for a good 25 years. Plainly, these old post drills are OK if that is all you have to work with. An 1885 Barnes camelback drill is a real quantum leap ahead of the post drill. I gave a heavier Champion post drill away to a local blacksmith school, and I think they never got around to mounting or using it, either.
Get hold of the Champion catalog reprint, or post some pictures here and maybe I can match a model number to your Champion drill. If you want to say you drilled holes thru steel by hand power, this is the drill for you to be using. Or, if you want to be a 'true path' (or whatever they call it) blacksmith and do it all in the old traditional ways, this is the drill for your shop.