[TheForge] Drilling angles etc/ now sulfur

[Bob Ehrenberger]

Peter,
I had never heard the term "garden sulfur" before. What is is used for in 
the garden?

The reason I'm asking is someone gave me some coal that they found in a shed 
on a farm that they just got. I tried it out, and it is really nasty stuff. 
I could barely get it to burn in the forge because of all the fines.  It 
doesn't coke up like good coal, the fines just go to the bottom of the fire 
pot and clog things up.  So I sifted the fines out and the chunks burned (so 
so). Finally I mixed the chunks in with good coal and could get a pretty 
decent fire out of it. It's not great but I have a 55 gal drum of the stuff 
that I need to use up and I'd rather burn it than just throw it away.

Any way I was wondering what to do with the fines. When I saw your post, it 
gave me hope that it might actually be good for my garden, depending on what 
it does to it. So is high sulfer coal dust safe for the soil? Or is it only 
good for certan types of soil?  And what would they be?

Robert Ehrenberger
Shelbyville, Mo.
eforge at centurytel.net

----Original message----
From: Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer <artgawk at thegrid.net>
Subject: Re: [TheForge] Drilling angles etc/ now sulfur

Hi Bruce;
I've used sulfur a number of times successfully to set steel into stone
and it lasts indefinitely as far as i know.
I don't recall it's turning red when molten though.
I have used garden sulfur. There used to be a huge pile under a chute at
a local refinery and no one minded if i filled 5 gallon buckets with it.
It was selling for about $10/# then.