StarScream

Hey Guys

I’d like to share a sobering experience I had today. I hope that this information will help make all of us just a little bit safer, and maybe even help prevent a disaster for someone someday.

I was grinding up large chunks of lump charcoal today, which I always do before milling it to airfloat for BP, rockets, star formulas, etc. I used to use a small electric coffee grinder for this, but found it to be too tedious because of the small amount that can be ground at a time, and the blades in them don’t seem to last very long against hard lump charcoal either. Today I took out my brand new meat grinder that I bought specifically for grinding charcoal, and WOW what an improvement. It filled a large coffee can in about 10 minutes. It used to take at least an hour or two to process this amount with the old, wimpy little coffee grinder. I was rather impressed!

I was just about to load up my milling jar and start milling it all down to airfloat, when I decided to do something that really woke me up. I grabbed a rare earth super magnet that was sitting close by and ran it through the coffee can of freshly ground up lump charcoal, and sure enough… metal particles! They must have come from inside the meat grinder.

This stopped me dead in my tracks. Fully paranoid now, I cleaned the magnet and ran it through another container of charcoal that had been ground up in my electric coffee grinder months earlier… metal particles again! I’m guessing these particles were likely from the blade wearing down. Makes me shudder to think that I have milled many batches of BP using this charcoal contaminated with ferrous metal particles.

Needless to say, I will never again use charcoal for live BP milling that has not been thoroughly checked and cleaned up with a magnet first.

Get out those magnets boys and go fishing. Never know what you’ll catch!

Stay Safe