Charcoal for smelting ?

[RU shooter]

Would charcoal be a suitable heat source for smelting my WW? I was thinking of making a steel box with a feed door or chute on one side and some air intakes and placing a heavy grate on top just big enough to hold my pot to focus the heat in that area. I figure Charcoal this time of year is cheap as no one is using it so I may be able to pick it up at a big discount. Should be no problems gerenating enough heat right? Doable idea or should I keep looking in another direction?...........RU

[RayinNH]

RU, certainly doable, however you really don't get much heat until you have a bed of coals. In my early years smithing I used charcoal. It will generate plenty of heat when you introduce a blast of air from a bellows or blower, enough to melt steel, but the coals starts to burn away fairly quickly. I still use my forge to smelt wheelweights, but I use bituminous coal. Unless your set up to do this, I would look for another method. Several on this board use Coleman cook stoves with apparently good results. Certainly a lot easier and cleaner to use...Ray

[shooter575]

Like Ray said the charcoal burns up fast.I even made a charcoal maker out of a 55 gal oil drum to coke wood scraps.Like the ones used in the P.I..Anyway the blower I had was from a insulation blower.looks like a skill saw with a impeller insted of a blade.I had this hooked to tweer on a home forge set up.Had a nice cast iron pot set into the coals.Pot full of lead,turned around th grap my soup laddle and turned around to dip and my lead was gone :-o. That fire had melted a 2" hole in the botton of that iron pot.Made a mess of that forge.I got it all out a couple days later.Gee,that was a nice pot though.
Hint.Find a coleman stove or a turkey cooker.Trust me!

[Hunter]

I though about the same thing, using charcoal as that is my favorite method of cooking. I got to thinking how much trouble it is cooking a pig on charcoal and decided it would be more trouble to use it to smelt with and I went with an LP burner. I think the amount of LP you use it not going to be that much more expensive than charcoal and a whole lot eaiser to maintain a temp.
I would hate as the temp starts to fall my lead began to cool as I am trying to add more charcoal and bring it back up to temp. For me it is not as easy to regulate as gas.

[Ed Barrett]

Around here the Propane Turkey fryers are selling for $35.00 bucks at Wal-Mart and you can find them at garage sales for $2.00 or $3.00 bucks. I used a liquid fueled (white gas) Colman stove for years but I finally gone over to the Turkey cooker.

[redneckdan]

i used an open hardwood fire once and a cut open propane tank. Processed +800lbs of range scrap in under 3hrs. Hot and sweaty work even during a cool summer night. Was goin fine and dandy til public safety rolled by. I fiddled aroud with a contained fire but I'd really need to put a blower on it to make it work well.