Metallurgical coke!!!

[Jeremy Blohm]

I got a small box of Metallurgical coke and i was wondering if it would be any good for general forging? I'm going to  find out for myself but I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with it and if it's any different than the coke we normally use for forging?

[Alan Longmire]

It's great for forging.   If I could get a good supply I'd use it.  Burns hotter than coal or forge-made coke, smokeless, lasts longer.  It is hard to light and will go out if you turn off the air.   When I have it I mix it half and half with coal. 

[Gerald Boggs]

2 hours ago, Alan Longmire said:

I mix it half and half with coal. 

And do you mix your whiskey with soda? :-)

[Jeremy Blohm]

Well this is good to know. It would probably start with a good charcoal fire. And it wouldn't be good with a hand crank blower either?I'm excited to give it a shot but I need to cut firewood before I'm allowed to do anything else. 

[Alan Longmire]

42 minutes ago, Gerald Boggs said:

And do you mix your whiskey with soda? :-)

When I want to,  yes.   Usually just plain water, though.

 

Since I  work alone with a hand crank, pure coke tends to go out on me during lunch and so on.  Adding some coal keeps it going all day.

[Jeremy Blohm]

I haven't hooked up my hand crank blower yet and I'm going to build a coal forge inside the shop in the next month or so. I'm sick of having to have the garage door open when its bitter cold out. 

[Gerald Boggs]

53 minutes ago, Alan Longmire said:

pure coke tends to go out on me during lunch and so on

Messing with you about the whiskey, but on the coke going out, if you put a small piece of wood in the fire and cover it, it will smolder for a few hours.  Plenty of time for lunch.

[Alan Longmire]

 

See, that's logical and traditional.   I must say I did get up to 90% coke/10%coal before I ran out.  I know I can order it, of course.  

[Dan P.]

On 11/23/2019 at 9:26 PM, Gerald Boggs said:

Messing with you about the whiskey, but on the coke going out, if you put a small piece of wood in the fire and cover it, it will smolder for a few hours.  Plenty of time for lunch.

 

Using coke? I don't think so. 

 

On 11/23/2019 at 3:53 PM, Jeremy Blohm said:

I got a small box of Metallurgical coke and i was wondering if it would be any good for general forging? I'm going to  find out for myself but I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with it and if it's any different than the coke we normally use for forging?

 

Coke is what most of us use in the UK, the ones that use solid fuel. It can also be mixed with charcoal.

I've used it with a hand cranked blower on site, but only until we were able to scavenge an electric one. It will go out very quickly indeed without air.

[Gerald Boggs]

54 minutes ago, Dan P. said:

Using coke? I don't think so. 

Odd you should claim that, since it was in England I was taught to do so.  Specifically, in the shop of Joseph Stokes, St Martin's, Shropshire.  It worked quite well for the lunch breaks.

[Dan P.]

1 hour ago, Gerald Boggs said:

Odd you should claim that, since it was in England I was taught to do so.  Specifically, in the shop of Joseph Stokes, St Martin's, Shropshire.  It worked quite well for the lunch breaks.

 

It must have been some of that magic Shropshire coke.

[Gerald Boggs]

Or maybe it was skill combined with knowledge.

[Jeremy Blohm]

Is there a difference between coke and metallurgical coke? If not than I guess this was the rookie question of the year!

 

[Alan Longmire]

Coke is the generic term and can apply to the breeze coke we produce in the forge, the commercially cooked stuff we call metallurgical coke, and the rocky crap they scrape out of oil refinery pipes we call petroleum coke.

 

The stuff that comes in boxes or bags and is about 1" cubes or 1/2" x 2" bars is metallurgical coke.  It also comes in 6" to 8" roughly cubical chunks for use in large blast furnaces, and in that form it's enough of a pain to crush that I know where about ten tons of it is lying in the woods and nobody wants it.

 

Same with petroleum coke, or petcoke.  It's around, usually in big chunks, but it's a pain to get in the right size for hand forging.  It makes a great heat-resistant material for backing up work you're brazing with an acetylene torch, though.  It will not catch fire for more than a second or two.  

[Gerald Boggs]

1 minute ago, Alan Longmire said:

It also comes in 6" to 8" roughly cubical chunks for use in large blast furnaces, and in that form it's enough of a pain to crush that I know where about ten tons of it is lying in the woods and nobody wants it. 

Someone dropped off several large bags of it without asking.  It did well as fill for some holes in my yard.

[Dan P.]

3 hours ago, Gerald Boggs said:

Or maybe it was skill combined with knowledge.

 

Lol, you must have eaten some of that Shropshire Blue cheese before bedtime that day.

Just try it yourself, you or anyone reading this-  put a small piece of wood into a coke fire, go away for a few hours, and when you come back it will either still be lit, or it won't (SPOILER ALERT- it won't).

 

[Dan P.]

I don't even want to use the "nuts"- 3/4 x3/4" -ish, unless I am heating something quite big, like 30mm+

 

With coke you'd usually want "breeze", "peas" or "beans".

[Alan Longmire]

I wish I had access to the stuff you get, the stuff I've had, from three different sources, has been "nut" or "egg."  The egg size had a disconcerting tendency to explode when heated, it must've got damp somehow.  But you could indeed heat some big steel with it!  

[Dan P.]

5 minutes ago, Alan Longmire said:

I wish I had access to the stuff you get, the stuff I've had, from three different sources, has been "nut" or "egg."  The egg size had a disconcerting tendency to explode when heated, it must've got damp somehow.  But you could indeed heat some big steel with it!  

 

It all explodes, Alan! That's one of the really fun things about coke.

[Gerald Boggs]

4 hours ago, Dan P. said:

go away for a few hours

I said lunch, not siesta

[Dan P.]

On 11/23/2019 at 9:26 PM, Gerald Boggs said:

 it will smolder for a few hours.  

 

business lunch?

[Gerald Boggs]

You're right, I did misspeak.  I've never need to use this trick for more then a couple of hours.  My question,  why you're so determined to tell the world I'm wrong? 

[Dan P.]

2 hours ago, Gerald Boggs said:

You're right, I did misspeak.  I've never need to use this trick for more then a couple of hours.  My question,  why you're so determined to tell the world I'm wrong? 

 

I'm not sure the world is really all that interested in our little disagreement here, Gerald.

Can I presume that you yourself do not actually use metallurgical coke?

[Gerald Boggs]

I've used the coke that was in the Stokes shop in England, don't know what type of coke it was, just that it was sold as "Blacksmith Coke" and here in the USA, I've used the L-Brand Blacksmith Coke and Petroleum coke. 

[Dan P.]

I think we can conclude that opinions differ on the matter, and that we await the findings of a conclusive number of peer reviewed scientific studies of whether a piece of wood will keep a coke fire going over a lunchtime break.