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...
Starting a coal stack...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.
Starting a coal stack...They held quite a long introduction/lecture before lighting it up.
Starting a coal stack...
Starting a coal stack...
Starting a coal stack...And then, when the fire got going, more wood was tipped down
Starting a coal stack...About 2 hours later, they open it up to stoke the fire, and covered the area with smoke
Starting a coal stack...
Starting a coal stack...
Starting a coal stack...
Starting a coal stack...Starting a coal stack...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)
