[TheForge] forging questions

[Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer]

Hi Terry;
The first question is, do you do enough heavy forging to make alternate fuels economically practical?
Is there enough BTU value in the grounds to get forging heat?
Why mess with the blown fines instead of compressing the damp grounds into chunks and drying them. Then using the chunks like any solid fuel?
Any hardwood scraps make decent forging charcoal..broken up salvage pallets are popular. Be your own collier. Hardwood chunk charcoal is available at big restaurant supply places too.
Locally, live oak bark ( dried) works.

On May 16, 2015, at 9:04 AM, terry l. ridder <terrylr at blauedonau.com> wrote:

hello

benn chatting with various hobby blacksmiths and the subjest came upon
alternate fuels for the forge.

coal or charcoal are the preferred choice for fuel.
propane has become on the expensive side in the last year or two.

several have been using and testing out corn. corn is used in corn
stoves for heating so why not use it in a forge.

one has taken an older torpedo heater and modified it to use spent oil
from small internal combustion engines and vehicle engines. The probelm
is with the noise.

another is using spent cooking oil and is used to make bio-diesel.
he is trying both ways. just as the spent oil and as bio-diesel.

I was looking for a common item that is readily available for free or
minimal cost and that would provide a controlable combustion.

i have been experiementing with coffee grounds.
with all the coffee shops around there are a lot of coffee grounds.
several shops give away the grounds for use in the garden and flower
beds. I have done this for several years.

there are several coal fired power plants still in Illinois and
Wisconsin. There is one in Wisconsin that I am familar with that crushes
the coal into "fines", basically to me it looks like coal dust.

they use blowers to inject the coal "fines" into the boilers to generate
the steam for the turbines.

why not do the same with coffee ground to fire a forge?

the difficult part is keeping the firebox hrout enough to ignite the
injected coffee grounds without having to use an external ignition
source.

the coffee grounds air dry on baking sheets in the oven. the oven has a
pilot light which provides just enough heat to dry the coffee grounds in
a day.

I have been toying with the idea of using waste heat from the forge to
dry the coffee grounds while in the hopper. this is not working the way
i envisioned it. air drying is perhaps the best way to go.


-- 
terry l. ridder ><>
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