How many coal pieces do I need to get the forge up to 150 degrees?

[Levelgrinder]

I'm about to head back to BRM to make some bullets, and am pretty sure I used most of the coal I had collected on the last run, so just wondering how much coal should I take to make sure I can get the forge hot enough to make lead?

 

How many coal pieces do I need to get the forge up to 150 degrees?

[I_eat_only_wolf_meat]

@Levelgrinder

I have not been to the blackrock weapon area where the bullet casting "forge" is, but I can tell you the one in Bleak inlet doesn't need to reach 150 degrees.  I'm not sure what the requirement is, if any.

This is very realistic, because in real life you can melt lead over a small fire made of sticks and small logs.  The melting point of lead is 327C in real life.

The forging temp of steel items, on the other hand is pretty unrealistic.  150C is nowhere close to the 1100C plus that a blacksmith would be using to forge something out of steel.

Edited January 8, 2022 by I_eat_only_wolf_meat

[turtle777]

You can get up to 80C with wood. From there, you need coal.

Therefore, you need coal to add 70C (150C - 80C).

Coal adds 20C per unit, so you need at least 4 coal.

-t

Edit: sorry, this is for the REGULAR forge.

The bullet crucible does not need coal, AFAIR.

Edited January 8, 2022 by turtle777

[I_eat_only_wolf_meat]

2 minutes ago, turtle777 said:

Coal adds 20C per unit, so you need at least 4 coal.

-t

AFAIK, that's not necessary for the bullet crucible, but I'm in no position to check with my saves right now.

[turtle777]

2 minutes ago, I_eat_only_wolf_meat said:

AFAIK, that's not necessary for the bullet crucible, but I'm in no position to check with my saves right now.

Ah, sorry, was talking about the REGULAR forge.

The bullet crucible doesn't need 150C.

-t

Edited January 8, 2022 by turtle777

[I_eat_only_wolf_meat]

2 minutes ago, turtle777 said:

Ah, sorry, was talking about the REGULAR forge.

The bullet crucible doesn't need 150C.

-t

You do need a lot of fuel, though.  Just to run the fire long enough to make a decent number of bullets.  It's pretty time intensive for some reason.

[UTC-10]

Depends on how one goes about getting the minimum 150 C forging temperature.  

With ten sticks (+10 C at +1 C per stick) and seven coal (+140 C at +20 C per piece) one gets to 150 C. That is the most efficient use of coal given a minimum use of wood.  One could use eight pieces of coal and one stick (to get the fire going, the 20 minute waiting period before adding coal went away a long time ago) and get to 161 C in the furnace. 

As noted by others wood has a maximum temperature of +80 C and coal has no upper limit so four coal added to a max temp wood fire would be enough to get to 160 C. Workable if one has lots of wood and not much coal.  

If at precisely 150 C one should never take a torch from the fire as that drops the temperature to 149 C, no more forging, and to get it back to 150 C or over would take coal since wood has a maximum temperature of +80 C.  There is a 12 hour limit on current fire duration (no more fuel can be added until the fire duration has gone down enough that whatever is being added would not cause the duration to rise above 12 hours). 

Once the fire is at or above the required temperature, the temperature can be maintained with only wood, given the way fires work in the game.  

Good luck.