Quality of LUMP

Bgillham · January 26

Having problems with up to 3.2 lbs of rocks and pieces of barbed wire in bags of BGE lump. Not only has the bag size gone from 20# to 17.5#’s i found 3.2 lbs of rocks in my kickash basket in this last bag. Anyone else experiencing this?

nolaegghead · January 26

Not uncommon to see this now and then. The charcoal making process is messy, pieces of kiln and whatever was attached to the wood ends up in the bags.

According to Jonathan (owns Rockwood), it's common industry practice to overfill the bags to compensate. Did you weight the bag before you opened it or just making the assumption it was 20 pounds?

My advice: if you aren't happy with the quality, switch brands. But don't make any decisions after just one bag.

stlcharcoal · January 27

I don't know if it's industry practice, but its RW policy to overfill the bags by a 1/2# to cover for any rocks, scale error, etc. So with the paper bag weight, should be 21.5#+, sometimes more because they fill till they are full as well. The machine shuts off at 20.4, but there's always a little extra from momentum and then more swept in if it looks low.

It's not uncommon to get a rock or two. But I hate it when concrete ends up in there because it's so much more heavy and it means the kilns are coming apart.

As far as nails, barbed wire, bullets, etc go, anything that's ever been hammered, wrapped, or shot into to a tree is going to form a know. That piece gets regeted by the mill and comes to the charcoal plant. If the thing is loose the magnets should catch it, but there's a good chance it's encased in the charcoal, and it's not going to reveal itself until the charcoal burns away. So, are we going to xray every piece? Hell no. Only way I've been able to thing we could beat that and the rocks is float the charcoal across a water bath....the rocks and the pieces with metal in them would sink or drop a little. But then we are reintroducing water into something it took a week to get below 1%.....dumb idea to do that to 99.9% of the charcoal to fix .01% of the problem. Easy fix, you get a 1/2# extra.

MaskedMarvel · January 27

stlcharcoal said:

I don't know if it's industry practice, but its RW policy to overfill the bags by a 1/2# to cover for any rocks, scale error, etc. So with the paper bag weight, should be 21.5#+, sometimes more because they fill till they are full as well. The machine shuts off at 20.4, but there's always a little extra from momentum and then more swept in if it looks low.

It's not uncommon to get a rock or two. But I hate it when concrete ends up in there because it's so much more heavy and it means the kilns are coming apart.

As far as nails, barbed wire, bullets, etc go, anything that's ever been hammered, wrapped, or shot into to a tree is going to form a know. That piece gets regeted by the mill and comes to the charcoal plant. If the thing is loose the magnets should catch it, but there's a good chance it's encased in the charcoal, and it's not going to reveal itself until the charcoal burns away. So, are we going to xray every piece? Hell no. Only way I've been able to thing we could beat that and the rocks is float the charcoal across a water bath....the rocks and the pieces with metal in them would sink or drop a little. But then we are reintroducing water into something it took a week to get below 1%.....dumb idea to do that to 99.9% of the charcoal to fix .01% of the problem. Easy fix, you get a 1/2# extra.

I’m curious if you keep a “greatest hits” shelf of weirdest stuff you’ve grabbed out of YOUR charcoal?