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Making Charcoal

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vtsteam:
20 gallon leaf bag filled with hardwood charcoal.


Before bagging, be absolutely certain that the charcoal is dead out and cool. Best to wait a day before bagging, just to be safe.

awemawson:
Petley Wood across the main road from us was home to charcoal burners up to the 1970's (before we came here) apparently the smell was awful. They used mainly Hornbeam. Seemingly the practice was a carry over from when our bit of Sussex was alight with small scale iron founders, then when the iron ore gave out they went on to make gunpowder. There are still large steel kilns in the woods that they used. Guessing, but probably 15 foot diameter by 5 foot high with a hinged top piece that is now largely rusted away.

vtsteam:
This is likely what it was like near you awemawson:



Mine doesn't smoke within minutes of lighting because I run a lot hotter with a lot more oxygen.  I can do that because the small scale doesn't create the massive impossible to control heat a large one would if you tried it that way. Mine is more like a reverbatory furnace with the constricted exhaust port. My charcoal retort also runs for considerably shorter period, depending on the wood thickness. Usually an hour, or even less with small stuff.

My charcoal will be used for casting. I hope to do both cupola and crucible CI with it shortly.

Mayhem:
How much charcoal per volume of wood do you get?  Also, what wood are you burning there?

vtsteam:
Mayhem, difficult to estimate, but about 1/4 to 1/3 of original volume of wood.

Volume is pretty difficult to measure considering all the air space I get while stacking. (actually just dropping in from the top). My stack is a lot looser than the traditional methods. But my burn is a lot faster. I don't have to tend a stack for 48 hours without sleep!

A better measure might be weight for weight, because you could use a scale, but I haven't tried that yet, and it also would depend on moisture content -- green wood is 50% moisture content by weight, dry wood is under 12%.  So difficult to figure how efficient this method is compared to others unless they had comparable moisture and wood density.

The wood I used in the photos was white pine slabs (wane) from my sawmill. The charcoal is therefore softwood charcoal. Prior burns this week were maple. Other frequent hardwood for me here is black birch (sweet birch).

There are many charcoal making methods, some of which I've tried in the past. But I like this one the best because of its simplicity, speed and easy control of the burn. I don't believe it is much more wasteful than any of the others, and I have a great surplus of wood to get rid of anyway from my sawmill.

Re. pine: hardwood charcoal is denser than softwood charcoal, and a more suitable furnace fuel. But I'm working on an idea for densifying the softwood charcoal into briquets. My cupola needs charcoal in the 3/4" size so I don't need big pieces. A lot of experimentation will go into this starting shortly.

Here's a picture of the pine wane cuts I used for the above burn, and  and birch and soft maple logs and awaiting the sawmill, as well as scrap wood.

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