Anyone Else Notice a Drop in Blaschak Quality Control?

I sure did compared to years prior. LOTS more wood this year, but the bigger issue is the rocks! Every single time I go to shake the stove, the grates have been getting jammed open by rocks. Several of them. Last night I dumped half the fire & 2 layers of fresh coal with it into the pan! Managed to save the fire though, and spend an hour painstakingly picking all the usable coal out of the pan, & shoveling the rest from under the grates with the pan removed, then separating it all from the ash. What a pain in the ass!

These are the 40lb. bags I'm talking about here.

In the past I had these exact same issues with Kimmel's bagged coal, although the Blaschak is still miles ahead in ash (much less), & heat production (longer - probably due to less ash) even with this issue. But damn these rocks! Figures I have 3 years worth of the stuff I'm stuck with now. Won't have any grates left by the time the rest of the pallets are gone. Getting pretty aggravated .... although I usually do at this point in the season. Just want spring to hurry it's ass up & warm things up around here!

Just venting ...

Nice rocks! It is possible that some get through, but they are pretty fussy ALL the time. Perhaps the need for product reduces the amount of time required to remove these gremlins. No need to panic...yet.

I KNOW you just love to run your lilly whites through each bag......as you load the hopper.

You're the first I've seen with the problem. I'll have to start asking customers as I see them if they've had this issue too.

The only complaint I have, as well as some customers this year, is the bulk Nut seem's to have lots of "pea" sized pieces mixed in. In bin's that were dumping into with last year's nut coal in the bottom, we can see a big difference in size between this year and last year. Heat wise, ash content, and rocks I haven't noted any difference.

On the wood issue, I was told by another driver (while BS'ing at the breaker) that the loads with lots of wood in them are coming from the Latimer breaker that Blaschak bought this past year. Why, I have no idea. I have noticed some loads of nut to have more wood than others as well.

I was at the Mahanoy City breaker in Dec. trying to get a small load of nut for our yard and the breaker had run out. I waited and BS'd with a few other drivers who said they were waiting on two truckloads from the Latimer breaker to supply the rest of the day at Mahanoy. Once I got home and dumped in our yard I did notice it had lots of wood chunks in it.

Just my observations.

only thing I noticed this year was I ordered bulk nut, but it is more like pea. It is a tad larger than pea but I know it is to small for nut. First time it has happened, good thing it was a warm winter.

Eric

First year burning Blaschak, the first ton was sloppy wet, poured like concrete. Rice size was a little big, burned hotter, cleaner, and less ash. I overlooked the wetness, second load(ton) was dryer, still a little big and burned super with low ash. The third load(1/2 ton) is wet again(frozen), bigger then the others, burns way hotter(maybe due to larger size), and produces very little ash. After burning 11.5 tons of Kimmel the last 2 years, I'll just shut it and take what the santa's are bringing me.

Kevin

I concur. My load if nut direct from the blashak breaker is 50% pea. It only burns about 75% as hot as uae and requires more air probably due to the pea mixed in. But no rocks or wood, thankfully.

unklechuckles19 wrote:You're the first I've seen with the problem. I'll have to start asking customers as I see them if they've had this issue too.

The only complaint I have, as well as some customers this year, is the bulk Nut seem's to have lots of "pea" sized pieces mixed in. In bin's that were dumping into with last year's nut coal in the bottom, we can see a big difference in size between this year and last year. Heat wise, ash content, and rocks I haven't noted any difference.

On the wood issue, I was told by another driver (while BS'ing at the breaker) that the loads with lots of wood in them are coming from the Latimer breaker that Blaschak bought this past year. Why, I have no idea. I have noticed some loads of nut to have more wood than others as well.

I was at the Mahanoy City breaker in Dec. trying to get a small load of nut for our yard and the breaker had run out. I waited and BS'd with a few other drivers who said they were waiting on two truckloads from the Latimer breaker to supply the rest of the day at Mahanoy. Once I got home and dumped in our yard I did notice it had lots of wood chunks in it.

Just my observations.

If you think about it, a good amount of stripped mine coal comes from old underground works. The timbers that once held the roof end up getting pulverized in the stripping process. Since wood is lighter than coal, it floats through the magnetite classification (cleaning) process with the coal. Unless they hire someone to hand pick it out, it will be there.

That was exactly my understanding. And the only guess I have as to why the Latimer breaker is producing more wood in the coal than the Mahanoy breaker, is they're stripping more wood at the site's feeding the Latimer Breaker.

My Blahack nut was on the small side this year, only an occasional piece of wood and no rock yet, I have about 1000lbs left.

Bk

Anybody think their rice sucks too ?

What don't you like about their rice coal?

By God, I just wouldn't buy any more of the crap myself.

Using a flat bed stoker, I expect some unburned coal. With UAE I had
some, with good heat. With Blaschak I get an unacceptable amount.
I've played with the feed and the air settings. I had a lot of ash with
Superior, but not the amount of unburned I have now. I would like
to try some Meadowbrook rice, but I haven't had a chance to get there for
some samples. I think the southern range coal might burn better on a
flat bed stoker.

Rocks & clinkers. Worse than ever. I don't even remember it being this bad with Kimmel's! Every time I shake it's a 2-fisted ordeal ... or else grates jam & fire is dumped. WTF happened to my powdery-ashed Blaschak??? Well the powdery ash is still there .... but WTF is with the rocks???

The black ones on the right are rocks disguised as coal. Those were the 2 I found before loading .... the rest I missed & went through the grates - those are a couple to the left bottom. The rest are hard clinkers that I never got with Blaschak before.

My first year with Blaschak I had nothing but powder for ash, and not 1 scrap of wood in 4.5 tons. The pea sized pieces are a given up here in MA. By the time the coal reaches us way up here over these shitty roads, who knows what size it'll be. If it's nut, your lucky. I get anything from powder to nut sized. Some bags are worse than others.

Thinking I may need to change my coal strategy, & find a way to make bulk work. All I need is a tractor trailer & some UAE coal .... oh yeah .. and money.

I haven't had any problems with my nut coal this year, but then again, I'm burning 40 # bags of nut coal that I bought initially in Oct 2010, so perhaps that's part of it. I have 8 - 2400# skids of nut coal stockpiled behind my house. Hopefully the product I bought most recently in late 2011 won't have any rocks or wood in it!