Homemade charcoal

[Toadflax]

As I had nothing better to do on Saturday afternoon (seems to have been some football match or something on the TV ) I went to play in the garden and did some experimenting with making charcoal on a miniature scale.

I filled up a boot polish tin with some little bits of twig and burned it on my fire the same way as I make charcloth and lo and behold, when I opened the tin there was some charcoal:

so I lit it:

and it burned nice and hot (though obviously not for very long).

It started me thinking that if I filled a biscuit tin with wood and put this on the hot coals after we had a barbecue, maybe it would make enough charcoal for the next barbecue. Not too sure about the smoke though in a suburban garden - even the boot polish tin charcoal made a fair bit of smoke.

Has anyone else tried this?



Geoff

 

[Eric_Methven]

I have. I use a baked bean tin with tinfoil over the top and put it in the fire at home. I fill it with willow twigs and when It's done I have a tin of artist's willow charcoal. I wrap up a dozen bits loosley in kitchen roll, pop them in a bag and sell them at craft shows for a quid. Twelve little burned twigs for a quid - some people will buy anything.

Eric

 

[Ogri the trog]

Geoff,
What did you use to re-light the charcoal? I understand it can be done with flint & steel - though I've not tried it myself. Some folk here use this method to rekindle a fire in the morning, using the burnt "dogs" of the previous evenings fire. Seems like a great way of making reliable embers/coals for your next fire, just bung on a tin of twigs at the end of the evening, and in the morning its ready to go again.

Eric, that idea is fantastic - almost as rediculous as the price some sheeple will pay!

ATB

Ogri the trog

 

[pag_3833]

yeah i tried this last summer, i was making a large batch of charcloth from jeans and thought 'why not try charcoal' so found a large container and put a few logs inside, took quite along time to work but as i wasnt doing anything else so it was fine. I was extremely impressed with the results actually, must try this again

 

[Toadflax]

Geoff,
What did you use to re-light the charcoal?

I used a piece of charred punk wood, lit from a Swedish firesteel, then piled the charcoal on top of it.

That is how I got to thinking about making charcoal. I had been having problems lighting punk wood from a spark so, after I had a suggestion on another thread, I made "char-punk" - which looked to me like charcoal - so I thought about making charcoal.

The charred punk wood lit so easily that I reckon it might be worth trying to light it from a traditional flint /steel.

Following on from Eric's suggestion, I might make more of this stuff and try to sell it as "charcoal for a doll's house barbecue".


Geoff

 

[Dave Budd]

that's a mini retort charcoal kiln it's the best way of getting the maximum charring out of any given volume of wood, but of course you need to burn something to char it in the first place

The small scale method you have just discovered is often used ot make artists' charcoal from willow btw

 

[John Fenna]

I have used Golden syrup tins full of willow twigs to make fine charcoal to powder for conifer resin/charcoal glue. Works a treat and you have the added bonus of having a fire going while you sit around making stuff, so you can, at the same time as making your charcoal - make a brew, cook up some bannock, have a full meal etc etc.
Larger scale charcoal burning will tend to mean more smoke to may be this is not for the average back garden......
John

 

[Eric_Methven]

Incidently, for anyone who fancies giving charcoal a go for the first time, you'll get white smoke as the moisture is driven off and it'll turn blueish when the charcoal needs to be closed down. By that I mean excluding all air so the wood chars and doesn't combust. If it's not closed down properly you'll end up with a pile of ashes. Then you let it cool naturally before opening.

Eric

 

[godfather]

Looks like next weekend has been reserved to slso try this.

 

[Dr Onion]

Very good mate! Always a bonus to figure something out for yourself!

Great!

 

[Lodian]

I did the same thing the other week, from my school technichal department the teacher gave me a box of mahagony pine and oak left over from mistakes made by other pupils from there work etc. I used a sugar tin put some pine and mahogany i n got a nice fire going etc and a while later ta da some nice charcoal.i tested it with some i bought from focus and mine lasted ,longer and was hotter.

 

[Toadflax]

After a small barbecue last night, I thought I'd try making some proper charcoal, so I got half a dozen lengths of wood (up to about 1 to 1.5 inches diameter), wrapped them up in tinfoil (thanks to Eric Methven for this inspiration), poked a small hole in the foil and put them on the hot coals. A nice wisp of smoke was still coming out of this hole a few hours later when I went to bed. The package of wood was about the size of half a loaf of bread.

When I checked this morning, I saw that it had worked partly - some of the wood had turned to charcoal, but some was only half converted. It looks like this method would need a continual supply of heat in order to complete the conversion, so my experiment to try and generate enough charcoal for the next barbecue by burning wood on the remains of the previous barbecue doesn't look like a reality.

I had hoped that the wood would generate enought heat itself to be self sustaining once the barbecue had gone out, but I'm guessing that there just wasn't enough mass of wood in my parcel to be self-perpetuating. This is presumably why home charcoal burners are much bigger (e.g. oil drum size).

Just out of curiosity, when 'proper' charcoal is made, is the wood broken into small chunks after it has burned? I would imagine that this is the case, as I can't see a commercial charcoal burner patiently sawing the wood up into tiny chunks before burning.

Geoff