What Do You Do With All Your Fines

Got an excessive amount of fines in my 5 ton bulk load of nut size blashak. As the coal came out of the shoot of the delivery truck and hit the wall of the coal bin the larger pieces rolled to one side leaving large deposits of smaller pieces and fines. I can load a 5 gal. bucket out of these areas with 1/2 the bucket being fines. If I sifted this through a screen I think I could get several garbage cans of fines. I hate to throw them out so I've been systematically trying to burn them. Using a hand loaded baker insert I'll load half a load of larger pieces to let the air up through from the bottom then put the fines on top of that. you need the air open more when doing this and it doesn't burn as consistently as a full load of nut size. Always having to regulate the draft and doesn't seem to burn as long or hot. do you find it worth the extra haste or do you throw the fines out.

I always mange to burn them. I really hate to waste things, especially those that produce heat. I burn all my cardboard and newspapers as well. When I have a lot of fines I burn them when I am going to be home and have never had any issues to speak of. I put them on the top of the other coal as you do. I never had as many as you describe though. Good luck

That's crummy that you got so many fines Might be something worth asking about the next time you order coal. I burn the fines, don't want to waste them, but it appears you have quite a bit to deal with. Maybe just add a bit to each load of coal you add? Just keep in mind that as the % of fines in your load increases your burn time will probably decrease. Also, you will have more issues with coal dust to deal with.

I read here on the forum someone taking a handful, mixing it with 'crumbed' matchlight charcoal in little sandwich bags twisted tight to start their coal fires... anybody else remember that?

I have collected about 3 gallons from a little over 2 tons of burning that have come up through the auger on the AA-130 and fallen out of the 'fine' slit near the top of the auger.

Pete69 wrote:As the coal came out of the shoot of the delivery truck and hit the wall of the coal bin the larger pieces rolled to one side leaving large deposits of smaller pieces and fines.

You're going to have that to some degree no matter what, the pieces in the middle are more likely to be flat too. Remember coal can flow like cement down the chute, if possible for the next delivery ask the delivery person to just dribble it into the bin. You can slow it down to a crawl as long as you have the right pitch and whether that is possible depends on your circumstances. Even if it has a really high pitch you can slow it down with a broom basically causing a back up but don't try and do this yourself because if the chute gets overloaded at the very least you'll have a big mess... at worse it will crumble and that's $$$.

Remember one thing... don't touch the coalman's chutes unless he asks you too. They are very expensive, that was always my one pet peeve people trying to "help" me and causing some major damages to the chutes. A ding to you might mean nothing, to the coalman it means there is going to be a hole in it shortly making it useless.

Good advice I'll slow id down next time and get it mixed in more thoroughly. thinking back I was the newbie directing the coalman. I told him to open it up and let it flow not knowing this would happen. Maybe next year I'll post an early thread advising next years newbies against this mistake. For now I guess I'll keep doing as the others advise and burn it. hopefully after getting down past these parts of the pile the rest of the coal will be nice and clean after already being separated.

I'm resurrecting this thread since I found this video pretty impressive!





Although, at the end he says the bricks last an hour? That don't seem right.. I wonder if cupcake sized bricks would burn like regular chunks of hard coal.. If you gathered cheap fines, one could heat pretty cheaply for the winter

Any thoughts? comments?

About 15 years ago I had my chimney sweep friend call and ask if I wanted a pallet of "coal logs" somebody wanted gone. These things were about 4" diameter and about 12"long. it looked like pressed coal fines and they were wrapped in some kind of cellophane, although that had degraded and was peeling of most of them, but they were hard enough to be holding together.

I burned them in the Mark III I was using at the time and had no issues with them. I can't remember burn time, but it must have been close to a regular load of nut coal or it would have made an impression one way or the other.

I don't know where they came from, this was from somebody that had just bought the house and they were left by the previous homeowner. I haven't seen them since anywhere, but then again I wasn't looking for them either.

I watched the you tube video, the mixture of coal dust/fines, saw dust, water , but why cement? you think the cement would cause a problem while burning. Anyone every try it???

I'm thinking the cement holds it all together..

When we had our handfired Colebrookdale we would fill paper lunch bags 1/3 - 1/2 full of fines and set them on top of a new recharge once in was rolling. The Cloebrookdale seemed to eat them up very few showed up in the ash pan.

I made 3 batches of the coal fines, cement and saw dust mixuture today. I got 21 "bricks." I am curious if they will hold together over night.

I'll keep you posted.

Dan

How did you make the bricks?

dtzackus wrote:I made 3 batches of the coal fines, cement and saw dust mixuture today. I got 21 "bricks." I am curious if they will hold together over night.

I'll keep you posted.

Dan

Fantastic!! Got some pics?? and how about a recipe??

I followed the you tube video...

6 meatloaf pans of fines
1 meatloaf pan of sawdust
1/4 meatloaf pan of cement

mix well, add water, just to crumble. Let sit over night.

I'll send pictures tomorrow after I see how they dried...

Dan