Unpopular opinion: the old guy at the swap meet was right about my coal fire
I used to run a deep fire with a big pile of coal mounded up over the air pipe, because that is what the guy who sold me my first forge in 2019 showed me, and I figured more fuel means more heat. Then a fella named Hank who runs a hammer-in out near Waco watched me burn a whole morning on a pair of tongs and said I was smothering my own fire. I brushed him off for 4 months because I had already made decent money doing it my way. He finally got me to flatten the pile out and keep the coal to about 3 inches with green coal banked on the sides, and my heats got faster and my clinker problem dropped way down. Turns out the man knew what he was talking about and I was just too stubborn to try it. Anyone else here fight a change in their fire setup way longer than they should have?