[TheForge] Re: Water on your coal forge fire?

[Mike Spencer]

> Why does everyone use coal? Can't you buy coke in the US?

No.  Well, almost no.

I was at the Hereford conference in 1980 and saw all you guys (and the
international demonstrators) using pea coke. Is that what you call
"breeze"?  I don't believe I've ever seen it this side of the pond.
Nice hot, clean fires.

I once did a demo in Ontario using nut-sized coke.  The guy who was
hosting the the affair drove to the US to get it -- Cleveland, maybe?
I forget.  I liked it a lot but I'm 1500 miles from his source and I
gathered it was the kind of deal, anyhow, where you had to go and make
nice with the guys on site to get it.

The Nova Scotia College of Art & Design had a bunch of coke in the 70s
that I used for a course I gave.  But it came in random chunks from
brick sized up to basket ball size.  I hadda get there early every
time to crush some for the evening's demos.  And it was *very* hard
and difficult to crush without a proper mechanical crusher.  Way less
friable than what I think of as "ordinary" coke.  It made a very
nice, clean fire that was a bit hard to manage.

And someone recently gave me a bag of coke, about golf-ball sized,
some of what he had found in a cellar bin in an old house.  Origin
unknown, supply limited to the few bushels that were there.

So I'd be real happy to have a few tons of pea coke but it doesn't
seem to be a common article of commerce in (eastern?) North America.
If it is, it's very localized.

---

Okay, googling for pea coke, it looks like there's a company in Ohio
who produces pea coke as a by-product.

     http://www.bta.ohio.gov/98j731.pdf

is a court proceeding (Jan 2000) in which a steelco describes its coke
and coal processing in detail.  E.g.,

    The material that falls through the screen is conveyed to a third
    screen.  The third screen further separates the finer materials,
    called pea coke or nut coke, and breeze.  The breeze is sold,
    although some is used in appellant's soaking pits. The pea
    coke is selectively charged with ore pellets and used in the blast
    furnace.  

Anybody live near USS/Kobe Steel Co. in Loraine, Ohio?  Can you get pea
coke there?  Cheap?  Easily?  Bags?  Pickup truck?  Gondola car?  Is
their "breeze" big enough to use in a forge? 


- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^

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