Just did a new Charcoal Making Howto

It is on the T5R FaceBook page. If you click the album and then click on the first picture you can cycle through the pics in order with step by step instructions of how I do it. And yep I am making charcoal today and now heading out to load and fire up 2 more barrels

Charcoal Making Day on the T5R :) | Facebook

 

One of the reasons I like the FB platform is folks don't have to join it to look. If not for the business pages I would not use it. But since I have to have a personal page in order to have the business pages, I use the personal page to keep in touch with close friends and family. LOL after 12 years of being on FB I have 32 friends on my personal page that are either family that does cause me to make mouth puke, and friends I know personally and people I served with back in the day. Oh and my Lawyer, Dokter and My Mechanic All the drama and political bickering and other FB Garbage I just don't see or participate in. Like any tool to my way of thinking, it can work fer ya or you can hurt yerself with it

 

We have a guy up the road aways that does it, and has for many years. Good post.

 

Supposed to be some magic firewater in willow, hope it was, old books always called for fine ground willow charcoal and the other usual suspects. Now lets get into the difficulty of corning powder and how much better it is when corned. Reading the old methods of making gunpowder, horse urine and stone walls, willow charcoal, which volcano had the best sulfur, should you wet it with urine or water, etc. Dupoint was brought here by US gov to make gun powder, mill blew up, finally got the idea of strong walls on 3 sides, weak 4 th wall and ceiling and when it blew up, as it always would in time, you just lost one man and one room, not whole factory. Not saying that making gun powder can't be done, just that making the good charcoal is the easiest step. Your method seems to be a good start. Thank you for the pictures.

 

Looks like cooking and smoking charcoal not a black powder precursor, but ----

 

Surprised you didn't have a bunch of enviro-nuts from upstate complaining about the smoke, added greenhouse gases - you know the spiel.

 

A least it's atmospheric, not fossil carbon.

 

I make a lot of charcoal every year, of course I also use a lot of charcoal every year.

Yep for the most part cooking and smoking only. I do keep 100 pounds or so over the winter to get the wood stove going when its warm during the day and cold at night and there ain't much left in the stove to work with. A bed of red hot charcoal gets the fresh fire up and burning a whole lot easier than feeding kindling in.

After they stop and buy a 10 pound bag of Kingsford from Walmart that is more environmentally friendly because it came from the store......... Kingsford Charcoal, for example, by far the most popular brand in the US, is made up of bits of spruce or pine charcoal, coal, starch (as a binder), sawdust, and sodium nitrate (to make it burn better).

Lets see I will pass on the coal and sodium nitrate in my my charcoal, the potato or cornstarch I can take or leave, same with the saw dust and I prefer a White Oak or Hickory myself. The bags of lump charcoal are EXPENSIVE $10 for 8 pounds on the low end up to $25-$30 for 15-20 pound bags on the higher end. So to make mine If I bought the barrel it Would Be $25 from Rural King (I get 55 gallon barrels from my Mechanic and A corn and bean friend with lots of big equipment for free) $1.50 for the cheap lighter fluid and whatever gas and oil the splitter and chain saw uses. 240 pounds wood goes into a barrel and 70 pounds comes out in hickory, Oak gives around 80 pounds per barrel. So it cost me a hair less than 2 cents per pound to make it, It is not 2/3 coal from a coal mine, No Starch from big ag, no sodium nitrate from wherever , no saw dust and all hardwood from scrap crap that ain't fit to burn in the wood stove from selective harvesting of dead and dying trees in my own woods. Seems pretty environmentally friendly to me.......... Oh and not spending money of diesel fuel in the truck to run to town and buy a bag of Kingsford brick or Royal Oak Lump Screw the Greeny Weenies!

And it is heavy smoke that does not rise much and settles on the ground before it even leaves my woods Not to say it does not release atmospheric gasses but a lot of that even is trapped in the heavy smoke particulate matter. And many of the gasses that burn out produce nothing more than water vapor.