Whenever I get to the bottom of a bag of coal there is a lot of fine coal dust. I have tried using it several different ways but it always seems to end up smothering the hot part of my fire. Hate to waste anything. Can anyone tell me how to use this stuff without wrecking my fire? I use a bottom draft cast iron firepot forge. Thanks.

I used to do all of my knives and damascus in a coal fire, and I spent a lot of time making powder to use in a closed fire.

You can mix the powder with water to form a thick slurry; get a good hot fire going; put a 10-12" 2 x 4 over the fire and pat the slurry over the entire thing a couple inches thick. It won't put the fire out under the wood. It will slowly harden into a solid mass and burn out the 2 x 4. You now have a perfect blade forge and you'll barely need to give it any air. Fairly reducing atomosphere too. Throw coke down the hole when it gets low.

Some smiths use the fines in a similar way to make walls for when they are working a long piece for a while, so they don't have to burn a large circular area to heat a long thin piece... a nice thing about using the slurry to control a fire is that is more or less puts out the areas it comes in direct contact with and then creates a slow burning barrier.

Thanks. I'll try it with a 2X4. I tried it with several pieces of smaller scrap wood. Think the wood burned out before the slurry set up. The whole thing collapsed and I had a heck of a mess.
If I use a 2X4 it may take longer to burn and give the slurry time to set.

The above is right on the money! Another option is to even use fire bricks on two sides for working larger billets. I used coal for my first 5 years of forging, and since the gas forges have come into my shop, I'll never go back to coal for damascus again! Don't get me wrong, coal has it's place, but with an option like gas available for welding............why make it tougher than you have to? I likely would have kept using coal, had I been able to find a good quality coal in the northwest. I was spoiled from the start with Cumberland/Elkhorn coal out of West Virgina, and have never seen a better grade of forging coal to date. I intially went to gas becasue of this, but once I discovered all the benifits of bladesmithing with gas, the choice was obvious.

I didn't used to like the smell of coal burning but then started using it to forge with. Now I really get a warm fuzzy from the smell. But I live in town and have to be discreete about when I run my forge.
I started with a mapp gas forge but it wouldn't get quite hot enough to weld with so went to coal.
I can see where a good gas forge would give better temperature controll.
If I got one it would have to have a blower. I'm not real sold on venturis since my mapp gasser wouldn't quite get there.
Maybe someone out there has a set of plans. Or better yet, is moving up to a bigger gas forge and wants to sell their old one. It's only a matter of time before the smoke and smell make me convert over.