Found in a recent bag of Royal Oak

Shiff · May 2012

I was dumping in some Royal Oak charcoal last night and found this railroad tie nail. Doesn't look like it has been used (not banged on the top) but it made me wonder what kind of wood they are using.

gtk10583 · May 2012

Obviously using wood heavily soaked in creosote.

The Cen-Tex Smoker · May 2012

Wow. That is the weirdest one yet.

The Naked Whiz · May 2012

If it doesn't look like the nail has been used, then it probably didn't come out of an old railroad tie.

jjmills · May 2012

So you paid $6-8 for 1.8 pounds of steel and 7 pounds of coal.

MikeP624 · May 2012

Can you email or call the company about this and get a free bag? If you even want it.

I understand the occassional piece of rock, but a railroad spike is ridiculous.

Shiff · May 2012

If it doesn't look like the nail has been used, then it probably didn't come out of an old railroad tie.

I agree that this nail hadn't been used, but how did it get into the bag of charcoal? I am going to try and contact the company.

cortguitarman · May 2012

Did you burn through all of your Humphrey? I've found one rock so far in the Humphrey.

Shiff · May 2012

I'm trying to finish up my last Royal Oak and Wicked Good before I switch to the Humphrey. We've been away and haven't had as much time to cook as I'd like.

stike · May 2012

would think some of the stuff is from metal found along a tree line. almost like the thing was driven into a tree as a hinge on a gate or something.

hard to say whether they source their wood from 'virgin' areas, or if they also use wood from farms and yards (tree cutting)

rocks can get incorporated into stumps, but i'm thinking the rocks we find are from the lump being dozed across a yard and dumped in piles on the ground.

i might mention it to them in an email as sort of a "hey Royal Oak, you'll never guess what I found..." rather than "I demand a free bag you sunsab!tchin rip off artists!" gotta think it's of course an accident.

there was a guy who swore he'd demand a free bag of Brand-X lump once his pile of rocks hit 20 pounds, but i shudder to think how much this stuff would cost if we had to pay someone to check each piece of jet-black material as it went into the back, to verify it was lump.

and, to beat a dead horse, out of curiosity, i weighed a bag in which i'd found a decent sized rock. it was a 22 pound bag sold as 20 pounds. hard to bitch about being sold a rock when the bag was overfilled to begin with

The Naked Whiz · May 2012

I would guess that a significant portion of RO's source wood is slabs from lumber mills. That was certainly true at Streumph's operation in Missouri.

Regardless, I'll bet that if RO responds, it will be a well-worded and polite version of "how the heck do we know? We don't do it deliberately." I wrote Cowboy (it took 3 emails) about a piece of plywood I found in their lump back when it was the scraps from millwork and their reply was essentially "we try hard to ensure this doesn't happen, but sometimes it does". I'm thinking if RO knew how it got there, it wouldn't have been there to begin with.

stike · May 2012

my inclination is to excuse it as a normal part of a rough and tumble operation.
i emailed them once about some severely sparking Argentinian lump, and although they replied, now that you mention it, their attitude was sort of just a verbal '>shrug< more than anything.

MikeP624 · May 2012

Not sure how the process works, but it seems to me that metal scraps could easily be taken out with a large magnet.

I envision at some point the wood riding down a conveyor belt where the could be a large magnet that picks out unwanted metal pieces.

Botch · May 2012

So you paid $6-8 for 1.8 pounds of steel and 7 pounds of coal.

>:)

Eggucated · May 2012

I wonder if some tree huggers put that into a tree to tear up chainsaws or a mill? Although you said it hadn't been used so that kills my theory.

Sgt93 · May 2012

Wow!

The Naked Whiz · May 2012

Mike, I'll bet that having a large magnet to screen lump for metal objects would not be worth the cost. I'd bet not very much metal gets into the lump and even if it does, it does no harm. In all my years, I can only remember 1 piece of metal (although it could have been a couple of more times, who knows).

R2Egg2Q · May 2012

Here's a recent RO find for me:

1 lbs, 14 oz of metal. Fortunately, I wasn't dumping my lump on this cook and pulled this out of the bag by hand. I'm wondering if maybe mine was part of a scoop for the lump but I have no idea how they "harvest" the lump.

Other than the occasional rock, RO has been good for me and I'm hoping to avoid more finds like this. I haven't written the company yet but have been meaning to.

misu · May 2012

Who cares, does it burn? :)

I just bought a pallet of RO from restaurant depot today while they had it on sale, they used a forklift to put it in my truck. I'm proud :)

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Found in a recent bag of Royal Oak

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