Anthracite Coal for Forging?

J

JRL525

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Jul 16, 2015
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Has anyone used anthracite coal to use in a forced air forge? I know traditionally bituminous coal was used, and charcoal is a modern alternative. But, I have a tons of hard anthracite coal for home heating and it seems like it would work with a forced convection setup based on my experience using it in radiant home heating stoves. Just wondering if anyone has tried this.
 
Forging coal has to be low sulfur soft coal. Pocahontas #3 is the major coal used. Charcoal is the second most popular fuel for open forging. I am sure people have used all sorts of coal to forge with, but they use all sorts of "found" steel too. Neither guarantee a good blade.
 
Anthracite coal is nearly impossible to coke properly therefore nearly impossible to get rid of all the vocs including sulfer. heating blade steel in a fire with sulfer is detrimental to making a good knife.
 
Bill, from what I read, Anthracite has 92-94% carbon. How much sulphur could it have and how effectively can we coke bituminous in a regular blacksmith's forge?
Bill Burke said:
Anthracite coal is nearly impossible to coke properly therefore nearly impossible to get rid of all the vocs including sulfer. heating blade steel in a fire with sulfer is detrimental to making a good knife.
Click to expand...
 
jdm61 said:
Bill, from what I read, Anthracite has 92-94% carbon. How much sulphur could it have and how effectively can we coke bituminous in a regular blacksmith's forge?
Click to expand...

Good question, I do not have that information. I do know that if properly coked Bituminous coal is nearly free of VOC's and gives a clean fire.
 
Bituminous coal has lots of volatile ingredients, often called coal tars. The gasses given off when coking coal are a tarry mess. They will stick to the hot steel in forging if used without coking. Some soft coal has more sulfur than others. The smell of soft coal burning is primarily from the sulfur. If used too soon, the sulfur will be absorbed into the steel surface. It can cause some problems in forging and welding. Anthracite is not suitable for coking, and is just a fuel coal. Sulfur isn't the major issue. It burns quite hot. Great for the pot bellied stove.....bad for forging.
 
I talked with some smiths that used a mixture of both (about 50/50 stated). Their concern was being able to build up their coal to keep the heat. We didn't discuss how they did it, just that they saved money due to being able to get several tons of the anthracite for close to free.
 
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