My first coal forge fire went out 4 times in a row at the swap meet demo

I was doing a demo at the Springfield swap meet last Saturday and my coal kept going out because I had too much green coal piled on top. I ended up using a hair dryer taped to a pipe to get the air moving and finally got a decent orange fire going after 20 minutes. Any tips on keeping a coal fire hot when there's a crowd watching and you can't babysit the fire?

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martin.felix1mo ago

That "green coal piled on top" thing got me laughing because I did the same dumb move at a tractor show two summers back. I had a whole bucket of wet coal heaped on and figured more fuel meant more fire, which is dead wrong when it's steaming instead of burning. An old guy watching from his lawn chair finally told me to rake the green stuff to the sides and let it cook down into coke before pushing it to the center. Took me three shows to figure out a fire needs to breathe, not get buried. Now I keep a small hot core going and feed it little bites at a time, and it holds way better even when people are standing around asking questions.

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