sootyfellow

Really? Where did you get it at? I live in southern okla and haven't been able to find any locally just by the bag on the internet. I'll keep looking. I'd rather have coal as I hear it burns hotter and longer. Thanks

I thought that might be the problem and I've been more careful but you might be right I may not be doing a good enough job of removing all the scale. Thanks for the tip.

Hey Guys, I got started building a homemade forge a couple years back, stopped when I lost a close family member, and I've just gotten fired up again. I'm operating on a shoestring at the moment so I haven't ordered any coal and I've just been running my forge on charcoal. I believe its the walmart store brand. I've been experimenting with making railroad spike knives and have made several so far. The tools I have a at hand are simple. Beyond my forge I have a simple wheel grinder, and a belt polisher. I've been tuning my forge a bit and have recently started being able to consistently get a good yellow heat. But I'm still having a problem with pitting in the metal. I thought I'd read a couple years back that store bought charcoal had chemicals in it that might do this and that I should make my own if i wanted to use charcoal. Could this be the problem? Could I be making a mistake when hammering/shaping the metal? I did a rough spike knife last night and I'll post is here so that you can see what the problem is. I've tried sanding the pitting out but it tends to be deep enough that unless I'm willing to take off alot of metal it still shows thru. Thanks in advance for any responses.