Hi all.
We went for a trip to an old mine/outdoor museum today, and there they make charcoal the old-fashioned way. I hope someone is curious enough to look through this, as it's the way we here in Sweden made coal for iron-making from the middle ages onwards. We don't have coal as on the British Isles....
And as
my lovely wife took some pictures...
It's not the biggest I've seen (mostly in pictures), but it will yield about 30 cubic metres of charcoal from 70 cubic metres of wood.
They held quite a long introduction/lecture before lighting it up.
And then, when the fire got going, more wood was tipped down
About 2 hours later, they open it up to stoke the fire, and covered the area with smoke
After this, they put in a smokestack, and monitor it, closing and opening air inlets to keep it from burning (but keeping it hot enought to burn off all non-combustibles)
This will be tended to round the clock for 5-7 days, then they will close it airtight and in approx 2 weeks they will be able to start raking it apart and see the results. It will be packed in sacks and sold, to help finace the mine-museum...
If you come to Stockholm in the summer, this is about an hour 30 minutes drive from the city center
Here's a link to their home page (only in Swedish, use Google translate to get an idea of what they offer);
http://www.skottvangsgrufva.se/Kjelle (still smelling of the smoke)
