Re: furnace fireman

This is a fun subject. One of the now useless skills that our business practiced was service and repair on coal stokers in furnaces and boilers. I have spent many nights out with my dad dismanteling a stoker to remove a piece of rock that had sheared a pin. I recall one time in particular, a large bolt about a foot long, and probably about 1/2 or 5/8 had somehow gotten in the coal at an old hotel. It was very cold and the owner kept the steam up by burning wood in the boiler while we worked through the wee hours to get the auger out that had the bolt tightly wound around it like a corkscrew and jammed into the tube. Some stokers used to feed directly out of a bin. I recall one of these in which one had to shovel out most of the 6-8 tons in the bin to get to the gear box. I too as a kid used to have the chore of filling the hopper of the stoker for the boiler that heated our store. Hauling the clinker up stairs to dump in the potholes in the alley went along with the chore.
Many years later my wife and I burned coal in the boiler in our house. This was hand fired, so I was a certainly a big kid/rail fan about it. I had access to a lot of free coal at that point as most of the buildings and homes in town were being converted to oil by our business. Most folks wanted the coal removed from their basements. My wife eventually nixed any more coal in our basement due to the dust, and occasional smoke back that would occur.