charcoal anyone?

[west penn]

 
A lot of you sawmillers/woodworkers might be interested in this topic. I tried it out and made some for myself and a few friends.  Go to twinoakesforge/making charcoal.  It's a good way to get rid of your scrap-edgings etc.   Might even find a market with the neighbors and such.  I'm planning on puting a barrel inside an old fuel oil tank with the front cut out and a small chimney. I think it will work fine that way.

[weisyboy]

we used to dig a big hole, fil it with flitches, light her up, when it had a good fire goign we put some sheets of iron on top and covered it with dirt, left it for about 3 days, dug her up and you had a nice whack of charcoal

[Tom]

We do talk about Charcoal and burning slabs for cooking as well as heat. 

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,44792.msg644445.html#msg644445

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,38672.msg557137.html#msg557137

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,26929.msg385680.html#msg385680

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,26929.msg385680.html#msg385680

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,6715.msg93034.html#msg93034

Sometimes, we can't see the forest for the trees.  :D
You can use the search function to find these things.  I got these by searching for Charcoal and using the topic search instead of the message search.

The message search gives you all of the messages that have the word Charcoal in them and there are a bunch.

[SwampDonkey]

I was going to say, charcoal is a pretty hot topic around here at times. cough ;D

Even woods for smoking like hickory bark.

[west penn]

 
I did find lots of discussion about charcoal on the FF, but this particular method shows in detail how to burn the volatile gasses that come from the heated wood without adding any more fuel to the original fire.  I can get it started and leave it  and come back after sawing and have a batch of charcoal.

[Chris Burchfield]

Before coal mines were created in this country, settlers heading West utilized charcoal for forging metal.  Great heaps of wood would be stacked usually against or into a large dirt bank.  Dirt would be added around the exposed sides and topping it off, leaving a chimney vent up top.  A few small openings would be made around the base for fire starting.  The openings would then be choked down, not allowing a free burn of the wood inside.  After the time required for conversion of the raw wood to charcoal, the holes would be closed off and the top capped causing the fire to go out.  After a couple of days of cooling, access would be made into the earthen cavern to access the charcoal.  People creating the charcoal would supply the local merchant, until coal began being supplied. 

[Dave Shepard]

And if you did it wrong, the whole works would blow up. :D We've got a few charcoal pits on our farm. It's mostly red oak at their elevation.

[jim king]

It is not very high tech here.  I just saw this quote on Yahoo news.

Code Select Expand

The United Nations estimates that 1.5 billion people across the globe still live without electricity, including 85 percent of Kenyans, and that three billion still cook and heat with primitive fuels like wood or charcoal.

[paul case]

does this barrel method have a drawback? what about having a lot of bark on the wood ?does it turn to ash? i may try some of this with my cuttoff scrap and edgings. does it have to be cut into small pieces when you cook it or will it break up easily after being cooked? pc

[Carpenter]

     Thanks for sharing that.  I think that looks like a very good method for small scale charcoal production.  I wonder how well softwood charcoal would work for cooking?  Most of my mill scraps and construction scraps are soft wood.  I may have to try it and find out.
     

[northwoods1]

does this barrel method have a drawback? what about having a lot of bark on the wood ?does it turn to ash? i may try some of this with my cuttoff scrap and edgings. does it have to be cut into small pieces when you cook it or will it break up easily after being cooked? pc

Paul , the "retort" method west penn gave an example of most certainly does have a big drawback. It is much to complicated and totally unnecessary  :D :D
like others have explained and shown there are other ways that are much simpler. Did you read about how the person explaining his retort system was talking about how he got his wood from going to construction sites and picking scraps? Can you imagine that if you had to do that you might want to make certain you could get the most charcoal you could? Do you have the problem of not having a good supply of scraps for charcoal?  :D I bet you don't.
See the pic Jim showed? That is all you need to do. You stack it up like that into a rick so that the fire burns so fast down into charcoal most all the charcoal is not burned up , then just douse it with water. If you want to get fancier just get a 55 gallon drum with a tight lid , fill it with scraps , punch some holes small diameter around the perimeter of the bottom and in the lid and then get the fire going in the bottom. When the smoke quits coming out just plug up the holes. An easier way it to do it just the way weisy said, use a hole in the ground. If you read the old time texts explaining charcoal production most all say the best charcoal came from softwoods like willow and pine. If I was going to use it for cooking i would want good hardwood like hard maple. YOu know we use to have a big party here every year we would start a huge fire in a pit and let it burn down , we would have it at a friends place who raised buffalo so the food consisted of buffalo steaks. Everyone came and picked there steaks and went over to the fire and threw it right down on the coals and let it cook.  always was a large group of people , that was a fun time. 

[west penn]

  Although I've only made charcoal a few times, I thought this method was pretty simple. If you only want to make charcoal once, any method will work if you can dig a hole near your water source and know exactly when to douse the fire and want to sift through wet ashes to separate the charcoal from ash and uncharred wood. If you want to do this on a regular basis ,I think it is the only way to go. I think I would try to keep the bark to a minimum, use it to get the retort goin. After that you can leave it. when the gas burns off your charcoal will be ready. I didn't build a big fancy box to try it out but I'm thinking of putting my barrel inside of an old fuel oil tank so I can have a pretty good fire under the barrel but the flames  will go around the barrel and out the top. I think you can use any shape or length of wood(obviously not too big diameter) but the less you have to handle it the cleaner you will be when your'e finished.  :

[Carpenter]

     I didn't think it was too complicated.  Looked to me like you just fill the barrels up and light a fire underneath.  After you build the thing of course.  You could just fill a barrel with wood with some holes in it on a fire and achieve the same results.  I have made a lot of char cloth in an Altoids can with a few holes in the lid on the grill.  But, what I liked about this system is the way that the wood gas is piped back around the barrels.  Interesting.  Of course it has been done before, I read through all of Tom's links last night and learned all sorts of stuff.  (I must be pretty bored because I never put much thought into charcoal before, although I have known about the pit method and understood the basic process for years)  Evidently there is a difference in the quality of the charcoal based on the temperature that it is chared at, and of course the wood source. 
     I used to do quite a bit of blacksmithing, and I will again but haven't found the time lately.  When I first started blacksmithing I tried charcoal because I couldn't find any coal close.  I didn't have lump charcoal so I used the briquets.  I didn't like the results at all and it may have been just the poor quality of the charcoal.  The fire didn't get very hot and threw a lot of sparks, basically it didn't coke together at all and any heat that was there disapeared in the sparks that were little pieces of the burning charcoal.  A dull red on iron was the most I could get out of that charcoal.  Not a long story but certainly boring.    Of course there's more to it, but that would make it a long and boring story.

[west penn]

a friend of mine does a lot of cooking on one of those ceramic "eggs' and uses a pallett of charcoal a year, goes to all the cook offs etc.  He claims the briquettes won't get hot enough. I'm considering supplying him with lump charcoal just for the leftovers.  DanG,he does a really mean whack o ribs!

[Carpenter]

     All this talk about charcoal is making me hungry. :D

[northwoods1]

     I didn't think it was too complicated. 

Hmmmm , it is not a complicated undertaking when you compare it to something like sending a rocket to the moon , but it certainly is complicated when compared to the other low tech methods of charcoal production that have been described here and in many other places. Making charcoal is easy , every time you build a fire you are making charcoal :D

[Norm]

As a guy that owns two eggs to cook on I can tell you making your own would be a big cost saver. Best price I found for lump last year was at Menards, 10#s for $4.50.

And yes I did buy them out.  :D

[Larry]

There's a modern charcoal plant close by.  Other than the slab yard, most folks wouldn't know they make charcoal.  It's a pretty neat plant.  They only except hardwood slabs, but since they don't have a slab deputy, some sneak in a few cedar and pine slabs.

I've often wondered if there is a taste difference in Q that can be attributed to charcoal content.  Commercial charcoal is mostly bark and sapwood.  The maker of home charcoal can be picky and only use heartwood.  I know when smoking I only us heartwood with no bark.  Bark seems to give a bitter taste.

Maybe a study needs to be completed...send your BBQ sample to me for a test.

[northwoods1]

   
    I used to do quite a bit of blacksmithing, and I will again but haven't found the time lately.  When I first started blacksmithing I tried charcoal because I couldn't find any coal close.  I didn't have lump charcoal so I used the briquets.  I didn't like the results at all and it may have been just the poor quality of the charcoal.  The fire didn't get very hot and threw a lot of sparks, basically it didn't coke together at all and any heat that was there disapeared in the sparks that were little pieces of the burning charcoal.  A dull red on iron was the most I could get out of that charcoal.  Not a long story but certainly boring.    Of course there's more to it, but that would make it a long and boring story.

Hi Carpenter, When it comes to coal for blacksmithing you really need to use actual coal not briquets. If I am not mistaken, what is sold as briquets is not actually coal at all but mostly just compressed wood waste. And it really needs to be bituminous coal, not anthracite or it will not coke up properly and you will never be able to weld in the forge for one thing. I get my coal from Ames , Iowa at a place called Skei Coal. They have real good bituminous there it is from the pocohontas seam in W. Virginia. I also have a charcoal forge and for many things it is far superior to the coal forge. If your at all curious I have a setup like this:
http://mysite.ncnetwork.net/resr7g3w/other_stuff/blacksmithing/blacksmithing.htm
I got the tuyere from my friend who has that webpage, he gave me one of those two piece tuyeres. It gets very hot and burns super clean. No smoke and very easy to start. Check out that axe that is being heated up which he forged. That is not him in the pic :D just one of the many people who stop by his place to learn from him. Lots of other interesting things on his pages if your at all interested take a look he is a world reknowned luthier he makes classical guitars.

[Dave_]

The broom sticking out of the cone mandrel is a nice touch :D

[MP_Wall]

My son made charcoal for a science fair project. It was small scale but the larger scale operation isn't that hard. The guys take a 55 gal drum with a removable lid and have a pipe that comes out of the back and is worked around under the barrel laying on its side in a rack. This pipe is drilled to be a burner of the wood gas that comes out in the process. We found it increased efficiency about 30-45% burning the gas. These retorts can make good charcoal easily at about 35 lbs of charcoal for every 100 lb of wood in the barrel and maybe another 100 lbs of wood for fuel.

There are a lot of links on youtube and on the web in general. Like this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akv4rbhvPHI

When using charcoal for a forge it was recommended to be pine as it was cleaner burning and burned longer.

MPW