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?

2 comments

2 Comments

patricia38515d 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.

thomas_campbell15d 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.