Uses for Clinker and Ash

[stuartthesmith2]

My blacksmith shop is in the basement of a 40x60 cowbarn that I converted into a shop. Most of the floor is concrete. Thirty five years ago, I removed the cow stantions in favor of shop space for forges, triphammers, and all other manner of blacksmithania. On part of my floor, it was dirt, rather than concrete. For more than thirty years, I have been mixing clinker, ash, and playground sand to make a very nice floor in that section of the barn. Concrete floors stress a blacksmith's legs, so the composite of clinker, ash, and sand make a wonderful floor for a blacksmith shop. You could imagine how much clinker and ash I have created over three decades! My next project will be to clinker my driveway down to the doors of my shop!!! That should take a couple of decades too!

[CurlyGeorge]

I use my clinkers and ash in the driveway in front of my shop. Used to have one little spot that liked to stay muddy. Not anymore. :D

[edge9001]

My shop is simpe wood frame 20x20 building skinnned with tin. no insulation no floor and as of right now the roof leaks. I need to redo the roof and add some structural support so I can seal it properly.

the point of this....
I have no floor so when ever it rains the roof leaks and I get a muddy floor. I've been puttiong my ash and clicker on the floor to help dry up the mud. this has been effective to keep the mud down, but I still need to fix the roof.

since we are all smiths, anyone know a good thatcher. lol

[Dan P.]

An ancient and deeply obnoxious tradition amongst British blacksmiths is to dump the clinker into the front bosh, especially if it is not their own forge.

[Dan P.]

I should add that the correct place for it is under or behind the forge, or in the scrap bin, or, if it is still hot, it can be placed into the rubbish bin where it can cause a small fire. Or, if you are using someone else's forge, you can smash it into little bits and mix it in with their coke. Oh, the comedy!

[Frosty]

A little scale in the soil is good for making roses red and peaches rich and succulent. My grandmother had me drive a 8p nail into the trunk of our peach trees to give them more flavor and it worked a treat, same for oranges, that was my experiment.

Frosty the Lucky.

[HWooldridge]

The local power plants crush their coal and inject it in the boilers that drive the steam turbines. The roads leading to the plants and the local service roads are in really outstanding shape because all of the ash and clinker goes on the road tops. OTOH, I burned nothing but coal for years but never generated enough clinker in my forge to think about adding to my caliche road. I reckon you have to have a certain amount of volume to make it worthwhile.

[edge9001]

I have lots of ash and little to no clicker to worry about. of course charcoal produces significantly less clicker than coke... or so I'm told. so far I've burned through 10-15 20lbs bags of charcoal with only two or three clickers the size of a quarter.

either that or I'm just missing them when I clean out my forge.

....I have been accused of being blind before...lol

[Dragons lair]

Darn, Do this mean I need to park the gasser and finish the clinker maker so I can surface my driveway?
Ken.

[Bentiron1946]

I been told to put it in the trash as it contained heavy metals and such and wasn't good to put where it could leach these nasties into the ground water, made sense to me, so off to a sanitary landfill it went. Now if that ain't a strange sounding term, the last time I went to the landfill there weren't nothing sanitary about it, filthy place it was! :blink:

[DennisG]

recently I watched a show on construction, they were making this new building as green as possible. One of the things they did was instead of the slag and such, from the steel production for the beams and all in the building, being tossed out, they crushed it up and added it to the concrete they poured into the building. Turns out it made for a stronger concrete. Ash and crushed clinkers in concrete?

[son_of_bluegrass]

Many years ago there was a study done on mixing fly ash from power plants with concrete and using that to make artificial reefs. I forget just how much ash went into the mix, I seem to recall there were several different mixes the one with the highest concentration I seem to recall was rather high. The focus of the study was to see if the heavy metal components would leach into the water and harm or prevent anything from living in the area. By that study it didn't have an adverse effect. So if you have a concrete project coming up, save your clinker and ash to mix into the concrete.

ron

[edge9001]

when it comes to heavy metals, lead is not the only one. Even gold is considered a heavy metal, so you could be paving your driveway with gold.

[Larzz]

Coal fired power plants have sold their ash to road construction projects for many years. It can act as a binder and increases the strength of the concrete. Lately the paper industry is looking at ways to use coal ash instead of clay as the binder in making paper. It results in a much stronger paper at a much lower cost. The only drawback, so far, is it won't bleach as white. This makes for an off-white paper. Hard to market, so far. Me, I use the ash and clinker in the muddy area's of my driveway, 450 feet of dirt and mud. The better half was going to use it in the garden but I mix it with the ash from my wood stove and it also burns waste paper from my home office. Too many toxins in the ash from glossy pages.

[Ferrous Beuler]

A little scale in the soil is good for making roses red and peaches rich and succulent. My grandmother had me drive a 8p nail into the trunk of our peach trees to give them more flavor and it worked a treat, same for oranges, that was my experiment.

Frosty the Lucky.

Gee, could this have been the start of the feud ???

[thingmaker3]

Take the biggest pieces, clean them off with low-pressure compressed air, coat them in varathane or some such, and sell them for $5 each at ren-fairs as "dragon dung."

Clinker is my #1 choice for filling pot-holes.

[ianinsa]

We use it as agregate in cement bricks the only bugger is iron oxide(heaven only knows where this came from) makes the bricks rust. It also works a treat as insulation!

[Bentiron1946]

Feud? You mean I missed it? I can see scale being good for the trees and garden but I'll leave the ashes and clinkers in the trash, our soil out here don't need anything else to add alkalinity, we already got to much, need more sulfates so I add soil sulfur and Epsom salts. I keep the the egg shells out as we got plenty of calcium too. Nails that have been through the fire are fine as they rust up real quick in the soil but I guess that you guys back East need some of that alkalinity to tame your soil so ash and clinker away. :P

[Frosty]

Gee, could this have been the start of the feud ???

Feud? We all liked flavorful fruit and our oranges were nearly blood orange rich. Or are you suggesting the Great White . . . birch was exacting some sort of long awaited revenge?

Frosty the Lucky.

[MattBower]

I didn't get it at first, either, but I think he was suggesting that you might have ticked off an ent. :)

[Frosty]

Gee Matt, that could be bad living in a forest like I do. Then again when I think about I think it must've been a tree pork. It did hambush me after all.

Frosty the Lucky.