First Batch

[tjdaggett]

I made charcoal.

On Tuesday night my lady and I made a little fire while we had our video call with the Community Group crew. I filled a green bean can with some thicker sticks, then pressed it into the fire open side down. We built the fire around it. When we were ready to go inside for the evening, I spread the fire out, but left the can in place.

This morning, I dumped the contents of the can onto this old pan. The result is black, glassy, and sounds crispy. There is no un-pyrolized wood in the center of the sticks. Success!

Next step: try this again, but with a piece of steel chimney pipe covered at one end. We'll see if I can scale it up.

I am extremely happy right now. This is my first step beyond hardware-acquisition and planning toward actually heating up steel. 

[pnut]

If you can make a small batch you should be able to make a larger one. I used a one gallon paint can and it scaled up five times with the exact same result. I used a semi direct method. I filled a five gallon steel bucket with some holes in the lid and put it in the large burn barrel and when white smoke stopped I plugged the holes. I don't remember if I took it out of the burn barrel or let The fire burn out. Regardless it worked great. It was last summer and I have a terrible memory. I'll have to figure it out again when I make a new batch. 

Pnut

[tjdaggett]

Here's the second batch. This time I used a tomato juice can (46oz?) and built a log cabin fire around it. What was in the can is on the right side of the pan. Due to the small size, it cooled quickly, allowing me to dump it out and fill the can with the coals of the fire, more than doubling my yield. The other picture is my current charcoal bucket after all this was added. I started with some bituminous coal from a friend, so it's not all my doing. 

Next up: my buddy is going to share a bunch of coffee cans with me, so this backyard venture is scaling up! I'll have extra cans too, so I should be able to collect coals without having to worry about dumping out one of the cans. 

I'm happy to say that I now have enough for a couple of heats... I think. Still haven't actually fired up the old coal forge. 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Looks like you are well on the way to producing charcoal on a massive scale.

[tjdaggett]

If I keep tripling my yield each time, you may just be right.

[FeyWest]

That looks awesome, I’m looking forward to getting back to my own setup to try and do my first batch. Do you have lots of dead fall and such to pyrolize? What kind of wood are you working with?

[tjdaggett]

FeyWest, I apologize for the slow response. I apparently haven't checked my email in two weeks. 

I live in a suburban neighborhood and I have a fire pit and a woodpile. My neighbors therefore share with me all kinds of wood. The original trees in our area were silver maples (the one in our backyard is the largest I've ever seen) and they are starting to age out. As people cut theirs down, I've been rolling a few rounds back to my house and splitting them. We've also got crab-apple wood (I offer it to anyone who smokes meat first), lilac, white mulberry, and soon oak. 

Right now I'm working through my punky wood pile. Summer is garden time for me, so I haven't made much progress yet. I figure that if wet, moldy stuff will pyrolize and get metal up to welding heat, the good stuff will be even better. 

[tjdaggett]

We got the third batch out on Sunday. Two coffee cans full of wood, cut to length by my bride and her chop saw. They came out crispy, hard, and shiny. As expected, the punky wood makes less dense charcoal.

Next batch I'm going to try using three cans, and I'll be weighing them before and after. Kelsey and I think we might be able to do four cans in our fire circle, but we'll see. 

My brother-in-law is also putting in a few cans when he and my sister have backyard fires, so I'm going to have to upgrade my storage pretty quick. 

[arkie]

Sounds like it's about time for a 55 gal. steel drum!!!  Don't let anything but fear stop you!

[tjdaggett]

That's the storage plan. Unfortunately, my fire size is limited to 3'x3'. Maybe I'll design a retort to fit that exact requirement someday.

[tjdaggett]

We're a few batches further in. I've confirmed that my fire circle--and fire ordinances--can support four coffee cans full of wood. If we're out there for a good hour and adding wood to the fire consistently, it pyrolizes through beautifully. I've got maybe five gallons so far. I'm pondering more efficient methods that stay within my city's fire ordinances. 

[Frosty]

Put the wood in a 5 gl. pail with clamp on lid and lay it on the fire. You don't need a big fire to pyrolize wood in a sealed container. A cover to help contain the heat around the retort will help quite a bit.

Frosty The Lucky.

[tjdaggett]

I'll see what I can find. Thank you kindly.

This is a vague question, but what kind of fire would you suggest? I'm burning mostly maple. Would you put the bucket on at full blaze, or let it go to coals? I'm always happy to hear, "Doesn't matter much", but I'm finding the devil to be in the details on a lot of the blacksmithing things I'm learning. 

[Frosty]

I just built a stick fire under the retort though using charcoal briquettes worked really well. I don't think I'd build a blaze, flames licking up the sides seemed to be plenty. I leaned some 14ga sheet against the sides to help contain the heat. 

Were I coaling I'd use a 15gl. grease barrel in a 55gl. drum and experiment to determine if it worked better standing up or laying down. The 55 gl. drum is the oven, the grease barrel is the retort.

I started messing around with charcoal after we moved into the woods and I had lots of wood and slash from clearing the site but never got beyond a couple experiments. I can just light my propane forge and go to work in a few minutes, where it took me all day to make a few hours worth of charcoal. 

I like charcoal a lot but use it out of a camp fire when we're camping, not in the shop unless I'm showing someone how to manage a charcoal fire.

Frosty The Lucky.

[pnut]

A five gallon bucket with a clamp in lid like frosty mentioned is exactly what I use. The only difference is I have a few holes poked in the lid and when white smoke stops coming out I cover the lid in dirt and let the fire burn down. I only make ten gallons at a time. Two burn barrels and two five gallon buckets. 

Pnut