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RO charcoal

Has anybody else found nails in their RO? Just picked up some wicked good for a Boston butt this weekend. :)

Comments

  • reh111
    reh111 Posts: 196
    I assume you're referring to Royal Oak and, No, I have never found a foreign object, including nails in the bags that I have bought
  • FanOfFanboys
    FanOfFanboys Posts: 2,615
    I use RO 99% of time. Minus rock or so a bag I like it.
    Boom
  • tybish
    tybish Posts: 61
    I like it as well. Just thought it was strange to see a nail? Big fan of the weekend warrior for my longer cooks though!
  • nolaegghead
    nolaegghead Posts: 42,102
    Rocks and nails don't suck nearly as much as plastic.  Or plutonium.
    ______________________________________________
    I love lamp..
  • SkinnyV
    SkinnyV Posts: 3,404
    Nope
    Seattle, WA
  • Charlie tuna
    Charlie tuna Posts: 2,191
    I will find a rock here and there about the size of a golf ball -- probably off the walla of the kiln that they are processed in, but it is clean compared to other brand i have used.
  • bettysnephew
    bettysnephew Posts: 1,188
    It is not uncommon to find nails/fence staples in about any type of wood products, as farmers in years gone by would use a tree as a fence post if it was in the right spot.  They didn't like to cut them down as they provided good shade for livestock in the heat of Midwest summers if it was in a place that was only good for pasture.  Over the years the barbed wire and attaching devices would grow into the tree.  Sawmills will reject wood to be cut if there is obvious metal sticking out of a log, and many mills use metal detectors to prescan before the blade can hit the metal.  A pal of mine used to work in a small town local mill when he and I were both much younger.  He said that hitting that stuff always meant a lot of work changing out the blade and having it sharpened.  It was also dangerous for the operators due to flying shrapnel when metal was hit.  Maybe today with the bandsaw type mills there is less of a problem in this way, but I would be quite sure that a lot of this type of wood ends up in the ricker's kilns.
    A poor widows son.
    See der Rabbits, Iowa
  • stlcharcoal
    stlcharcoal Posts: 4,684

    I posted this in a thread a few weeks ago regarding metal banding in charcoal.......along the same lines, so I'll just cut and paste it.

    Do not worry about these bands. They are part of the kiln process. All the scraps are banded together, then loaded in the kilns. After 7-10 days of heat, or when the loader pulls the charcoal out, these straps often snap. 99% of the time they are pulled out of the load like a ribbon, but sometimes they break into smaller peices.. No big deal, just throw it away.

    Charcoal comes from trees, and all kinds of objects get lodged, nailed, or grown into 50+ y/o trees. Barb wire fencing, chicken wire, nails, bullets, arrowheads, rocks, etc. The tree often forms a knot around object, so that's not a desirable piece for lumber--thus it goes in the kiln. You wouldn't believe the amount of metal that gets sorted out in the bagging process. Some of it is still inside of the charcoal chunks though--you'll see it in the ash.

    None of this gets eaten, so don't worry about it. Now, if you start finding floor scrap, molding scrap, plastic, dead mice, cigarette butts--it's cause for concern. There shouldn't be anything like that in the bag after the kilning process, and there shouldn't be anything that will give off fumes. A rock or some metal wire/banding does not give off fumes, nor hurt the BGE. Just throw it away and hope for an arrowhead next time.

    Some of the "prizes" do not get sorted out in the bagging process because they are still in the charcoal......you discover them in the ash.  When a tree has a foreign object lodged in it, it "walls" off that area and you get a knot.  Lumber is graded by the number of knots, so a really "knotty" piece is usually discarded and ends up in the kiln.