Ugh- paint...

The other night I started in on a new project- a fireplace poker like the one I made at Jerry Culberson's in 2007. The trick to this project is hot chiseling a tail onto the end of a bar and then forging it into a hook. Anyway, I noticed a smell that I thought was paint, but couldn't figure out where it was coming from. I haven't used the big forge since I relined it and thought the sairset mortar might have had some zinc in it so I chalked it up to the first firing burning off the zinc.

Imagine my surprise tonight when the smell came back. Well, I assume the sairset does not use zinc (because that would be stupid, seeing as how it's designed to be used in kilns). It took me a little while, but I finally figured out that it was the new shelf I added to the front of the forge so I can rearrange the bricks. Here's the lesson: if you're going to use something that has been painted, either make sure the paint is going to be burned off (as opposed to just offgassing repeatedly when it gets really warm) or grind that crap off.