After reading a couple of recent posts about coke, I just thought I'd clog the airwaves with the following comments:
Coal: I usually burn coal. There is a mechanical engineers's handbook called Marks' Handbook. The 1975 version that I have has about 50 some pages on coal. I didn't know that "blackmsith coal" was bituminour until I read those pages. I had always assumed that anthracite was the highest BTU coal, but bituminous really is. They list a half dozen difeerent bituminous coals. One of them, the highest BTU output of all, is also the coal that cokes the best. All other coals are worse at coking and generate fewer BTU's per pound.
People have asked about the smoke in the shop. I tell you that if every is right, you don't need any smoke in the shop, except for maybe a little upon startup. The coal itself shouldn't be smoking once it is going. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it------ except for the one time:------ We were attending a European Blacksmith conference in Arles sur Tech France. The conference was held at the site of an ancient-modern smelter. (It finally closed in about the 1980s, I think). Anyway, the coal that they used there, out in the open, was soooooo smokey that it would re-lit about 3 feet away from the forge!!!! Never before or since have I seen such a thing.
Coke: Our club bought 18 tons of 4" X 6" coke at an auction in Milwaukee, Wi 15 or 20 years ago. The plan was to break it into useable chunks in a gravel crusher. No luck. The coke just turned to powder and clogged the machine. I got a ton of it. When I need some, I chop it up into pea to walnut size with a handled hot cutter while the big lumps are sitting on a board inside a cardboard box. My forge draws so well that coke doens't go out, even when unattended. I use it when I am going to do a lot of forge welding. I build my fire and then add only coke while forge welding.
Pete Stanaitis
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