JHCC

Addendum: my mechanic was thrilled to pieces. And has invited me to come pick over the scrap bin any time.

Especially in, oh, Bradley, OK?

Develop that relationship as much as you can. DSW is right; when the time comes for him to get rid of the stuff, you want to be the first person he thinks of when he asks himself the question, "Who's going to make best use of this stuff?"

And here it is!

Charles R. Stevens, I totally get that. However, switching from charcoal to anthracite has changed things up considerably, and this setup is working a lot better than what I was doing previously with charcoal.,

Aaaaaand the leaf blower crapped out. Switched to the shop vac.

Since I don't think I'll need as deep a duck's nest for coal, I've carved off some of the extra clay.

I decided to try some inexpensive anthracite from Tractor Supply Company (as discussed here), but discovered that the hand-pumped blower wasn't giving me enough of a blast to get up to forging heat or keep it there. Then I remembered the electric leaf blower... Total success. Plus, the look on my wife's face when I told her I'd decided to stick my blower up the ash dump was priceless.

Now, if it were a turnip truck, that would be a simple identification. Potato truck, no way.

Oh, that's been taken care of. Trust me. Oh, and I finished it with Minwax brown paste wax.

Basically, yeah. This anthracite is behaving differently than soft (bituminous) coal; more like an incredibly dense charcoal. Unlike soft coal, it doesn't expand and meld together into a mass of coke. It's more like the rocks just start glowing, and the more air you put on them, the brighter they glow.

Oh, forgot to add: they only had the nut coal at my TSC. Most of the lumps were about walnut-size, but the occasional larger one needed a whack with the corner of a cross pein to break into smaller bits. No appreciable coking. Come to think of it, I didn't see any coking at all.

Progress report: as expected, tough to get lit. Very smoky at first, but clean burning once the oily coating burned off. (I suspect the oil is to keep the dust down.) I had a hard time getting a forging heat with the hand blower, but then I realized that I could put the nozzle of my electric leaf blower up the ash dump and keep a constant airflow. Success! Burned hot and clean. Little clinker. I wasn't watching at first and burned a corner of the metal, so getting to welding temperature shouldn't be hard. Overall, very happy. Here's the rivet forge with the blower:

Well, here's my very first bottle opener. It's made from the center shaft of a collapsible steering column (hence the universal joint at the end), and I'm going to give it to my mechanic as a Thank You for letting me pick through his scrap bin. The shaft has an interesting cross section, with rounded edges and a groove running up each side. Looks nice twisted -- especially considering that I don't have a vise!

Similarly, if you want to quote a post that contains an image, delete the image from the quote. We all saw it the first time, and that's a really unnecessary gobbling of bandwidth.

neophite, I'm not seeing any of these pictures.

In the words of Chris Rock, "Just because you can do it, doesn't mean that it's too be done! You can drive a car with your feet, but that doesn't make it a good ---ing idea!"

It's not as durable as wax, though.

Lanolin is an oil produced by glands in the skin of sheep; it's what gives wool its water resistance and typical smell. You can buy pure lanolin in pharmacies and natural food shops. It's used as a moisturizer.

Well, I got a sack of the nut coal. The sample that they had sitting out showed chunks two or three times the size of a Brazil nut. I figured that I can always break it into smaller pieces if I have to. To be honest, it looks and feels to the hand a lot like the last sack of blacksmith coal I had a couple of decades ago. I'll let you know how it burns if I ever get a spare minute to fire up the forge again.

Don't know, but I've had a wicked itch in the middle of my back that I'd like to take it to.

It looks like my local TSC has both rice and nut in stock. I've never worked with anthracite; any suggestions which would be better? (NB: I'm working a rivet forge with a lever-cranked blower, doing small-scale hobby work and toolmaking.)

Driving down I-90 yesterday in stop-and-go traffic, I spotted something lying on the left shoulder. Traffic sped up just as I reached it, so I couldn't stop to pick it up, but I did see it was a coil of about a dozen yards or so of steel cable.

There is a passage in Richardson's "Practical Blacksmithing" that discusses forging a garden rake with a similar process to what's shown here.

"The fool hath said in his heart, 'There is no need to read the old IFI threads'." -- First Letter of Saint ThomasPowers to the Curmudgeons. "Woe to you, Newbies and Greenhorns! For you watch a few YouTube videos and think you're going to make a sword; you refuse to learn the basics and think you are masters. That, and you don't put your location in your profile. Verily, I tell you, you will end up in the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. And overthinking." -- The Gospel According to Saint Frosty, Chapter 3