Loading…
11
Reading a 1920s forge manual and the coal consumption numbers are wild
I was going through a copy of 'The Blacksmith's Craft' from 1923 and it claims a standard forge could burn through a quarter ton of coal in a single ten hour day. That's a whole pallet of bagged coal from the yard, gone. How did anyone afford to run a shop before industrial electricity?
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
patricia3855mo ago
My granddad ran a small shop and always said the coal bill was what kept him up at night. He had to choose jobs carefully because heating a big piece for a wagon tire could eat a day's profit in fuel alone. It makes you realize why so many smiths also farmed or did odd jobs just to keep the forge fed.
8
beth7195mo ago
My uncle collects old trade catalogs and the numbers for a steam hammer forge were even worse. One from 1910 said a medium sized shop could use over two tons of coal in a day just to keep the steam up. It wasn't just buying the coal, you needed a team and wagons to haul it all. The whole economy had to be built around moving that much solid fuel.
7
thomas_campbell5mo ago
A quarter ton a day is just insane to picture. That's a crazy amount of manual labor just moving fuel around before you even start working. No wonder everything was so expensive back then.
6