Ramblings On Collecting Charcoal

[woodtick]

I burn wood in an airtight stove as my only source of heat in the winter. It's mostly a mix of maple and oak off my own woodlot so my wood supply is no problem. Days through the winter when the fire burnt down just right to a nice bed of coals and when I knew it was burnt down just right to get good charcoal I would take out a scoop or two out and give the coals a light misting of water from a spray bottle to help cool them off and I ended up with an excellent quality charcoal.
My main source of charcoal I get by burning it using the barrel method and sneaking a few scoopfuls out of the stove now and then was just supposed to help supplement that. But we're drawing down to the end of the wood burning season and so far I saved up 25 - 5 gallon buckets full of A1 quality charcoal just by sneaking it out of the stove.
On the downside my firewood consumption was alot more than other years >> Gee, I wonder why

subject mispelling corrected - carcoal to charcoal

[Swamp Fox]

Run the ashes through some hardware cloth and you can recover a lot of charcoal bits. The amount of charcoal left in the ashes depends on the stove and how it burns. If you shut it down early and air tight you can get more charcoal.

[Stephan P]

Carcoal: a wonderful animal which runs on 3 and a half legs. Usually found resting in the warm ashes of a recent fire, the Carcoal has a ferocious appetite and can easily devour a gallon of charcoal in a single kill. Carcoals have been all but extinct ever sinse Hominus Eructus discovered that lighting the Carcoal's tail will produce a long-burning lamp-like light, and with many Carcoals put on a stick, a primative human could read about blacksmithing well into the wee hours of twilight.


BTW, I used to use the pit method to make charcoal, worked pretty good but the coal wasn't quite as clean as out of the firebox / barrel, but the method was easier. Light the pit, let it burn, cover it up and walk away, come back in to morning and repeat.

[Strine]

I use coke rather than coal or charcoal. Imagine my surprise when I found a pile of the stuff by the side of the road out in the country. I scooped up 2 40kg bags and left probably another bag for the next bloke. Luck's a fortune.

[Archie Zietman]

What's a Carcoal? a woodburning stove? A 3-wheeled car? :?:

[Glenn]

Coal, to many people, is a black rock that sometimes can be burned. To a blacksmith, it is the fuel used in the forge to heat the metal, and comes in two varieties, good and bad. Coal seams are fossilized accumulations of plants which lived and died in swamps that were so devoid of oxygen that few microbes or other critters could survive to feed on their remains. The first phase of coal known as "peat" thus developed. These swamps were interwoven with intricate, meandering river channels which eventually covered things with mud and silt. Subsequent deep burial by more sediments in succeeding geologic ages resulted in heat and pressure which transformed the peat into coal. Generally speaking, every 12 inches of coal thickness represents approximately 10,000 years of continuous peat accumulation.

Coke is coal with the volitals (smoke) burned off.

Charcoal is wood with the volitals (smoke) burned off.

A wood burning stove is a device to contain a wood fire that is used to heat a living or work space, home or shop. If the doors are able to be "sealed" in the closed position, usually with a gasket, they are considered air tight. Air is allowed into the fire by small holes covered with an adjustment. The air flow is adjusted to control the burn rate of the fire.

A 3 wheeled car? This may be an European model but I do not recall seeing one here. There are some folks that combine a Volkswagon motor, axle, and wheels with the frame and front half of a motorcycle. I have seen a few of those.


Reference material : BP0051 Good Coal

[Archie Zietman]

oh, is carcoal a misspelling of charcoal? The stove and car were guesses as to what this mysterious CAR-coal could be. sorry :oops: I understand now.

[Glenn]

As the original post discussed charcoal from the fire, I have changed the spelling from carcoal to charcoal in the sugject line. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.