In person I mean.
Well yeah. It was how we heated our home when I was a kid growing up in England.
Same here
Yes. In a fire. Why?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen coal burn, but you can find pieces of it along the abandoned railways and beaches in my area. We have a coal dock that’s been abandoned for 50 years and the ground is still black with coal dust
Edit: actually a scenic railroad in my area still has a coal fired steam locomotive so yes, I can say I’ve seen coal burn!
While growing up my family’s home had heating stoves capable of burning both wood and coal. While we primarily burned wood, coal would sometimes be used, particularly on nights when it was really cold out as it tended to burn hotter and usually burned longer than wood of the same volume.
I’ve done some blacksmithing as a hobby. The two most common ways of heating the metal are a gas furnace and a coal forge. The forge normally has some sort of forced air coming from the bottom to feed the fire. The coal starts burning real smoky like, but then turns to coke and burns hotter the more air you force through it. Typically you pile some coal around the sides of the fire so it converts to coke then you scoop it into the fire as needed. Also it produces a waste product called kilnker that builds up at the bottom of the fire at the tuyere (the nozzle or grate the air is forced throug). It’s kind of like stone or metal and it needs to be cleaned out to keep the fire going.
Fun fact for those who don’t know. You can forge metal with a wood fire if you have forced air.
There are also ways to build a clay oven so that it has a natural updraft, giving it that forced air. It’s actually how people used to fire pottery.
Other than that, you can also use charcoal, which burns hotter with forced air.
Also, a hairdryer puts out enough air to forge with you’re running a ribbon burner set-up. But if you are, you likely know that already.
-A fellow hobbyist blacksmith
Don’t go to a lot of BBQs, I take it?
Charcoal isn’t coal. There are several types of natural coal and charcoal, and they all have slight differences in density and chemical composition; so they probably all look a bit different when burning. Just like how different brands and types of charcoal can also look slightly different when burning (such as one kind throwing off sparks while it ignites and another that doesn’t).
I’m talking real coal.
Ehrm yes, that’s also ‘real’ coal. There are multiple types of coal.
https://zgrills.com.au/coal-vs-charcoal
Coal is a natural mineral that forms over the span of millions of years while charcoal is a manufactured product created from wood. While coal in its natural state is never used alone in a barbeque or smoker, it is commonly added to charcoal briquettes to increase the energy density.
It might have a bit of coal in it, but it’s not coal.
We used to have a coal fire when I was growing up, so routinely in the winters.
A lot of homes where I grew up still had coal fires, so yes, a lot, but its been a long while since I have seen a coal fire. Charcoal as the other commenter said i still see regularly on bbq’s .
I lived in wv, you find chunks of it out in the ground sometimes. I was a curious kid and tried to get some to light. It was real low quality though so it burnt like shit
Yes. On a camping trip. At one end of the lake is the remains of an old WWII POW camp. There were at the time some small piles of coal. We took a couple of pieces and burned it in a camp fire. Only because I had never seen coal burn before.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/White-otter-Lake-lnJZ4ycdSKOAmJ2U4rZSIw?s=m
Yep, I dabble in blacksmithing.
You get it going -smokey as shit at first-and it melts together into a lighter, more solid piece that burns hotter and cleaner. That’s called coke.
Then you toss your irons in
Yeah, I grew up in a poor area in rural Ohio and we heated primary with coal until 2021.
Here in New Zealand you can buy it at the Hardware store in 20KG bags. Older houses have pot belly “stoves” for heat, which are smaller then log burners usually, and coal is the best fuel for them.
I did an hour of a metalworking class at scout camp in the 80s.
Yes, my grandparents had a potbelly stove that they used for heat. A coal tripple was about a quarter of a mile from our house and we could walk down the railroad tracks and collect a bucket full.
