The future and availability of forge fuels

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Back when we started up The Iron Dragon Forge & Clay Works my wife had a Tax ID # with her Beauty shop and we included the B/S shop with a DBA on that number, I say we it was her accountant that got that done.

As far as making one's own charcoal, for us old folks, making the charcoal isn't a problem, until we would get to the stage of going out into our 60 acre woods to cut down dead wood then getting it back to the shop from there. Too old to be hauling, cutting and splitting it to feed the retort. Of course in all probability by the time that would become a reality, we'll be pushing up daisy's.

[anvil]

Lol, that's how I look at it as well.

[pnut]

16 hours ago, SLAG said:

Mr. Arkie,

Some folks have contacted charcoal broiling steak houses and

Before I started making my own I ordered charcoal through the commercial  distributor that the hotels I work at use to purchase their bulk restaurant supplies from. I don't remember the name right off the top of my head but it was much cheaper than a retail store. 

Pnut

[BartW]

Charcoal is (I think) a dying thing; save the trees and all that. Large percentages of Europe were deforested for making charcoal; and I don't think it's a good idea to continue to do that. On the other hand; charcoal for blacksmithing is like 0,001% of the charcoal usage in industry & BBQ.

Coal - black antracite hard coal but also bitumous - is still readily available, in this corner of the world  .. And fairly cheap. 
Propane is also available easily. 

Electric also works; if you have solar panels and such  

 

For the future; I'll stock up on a couple of tonnes of Coal; as this will be the first to go.

 

[JHCC]

The charcoal-related deforestation of Europe was caused primarily by the Industrial Revolution's demand for fuel to feed the steam engines, before the shift was made to coal. The same thing happened in North America. (There was also deforestation related to the shipbuilding industry, especially for the Napoleonic Wars, but that was limited to a smaller number of species.) Prior to that, charcoal burning was simply a part of active forest management, especially through the use of extensive coppices.

[ThomasPowers]

I attended a Medieval Technology Conference at Penn State once.  One of the more interesting presentations was on the wood used for a HUGE tithe barn in England; turns out that although it was a post and beam structure only about 2% of the wood used in it came from trees over 250 years old---and several of those pieces had been recycled from earlier structures.  Most of the wood was from managed forests---coppicing, pollarding, etc and was more like 30 to 40 years old.   Charcoal does NOT have to be non-sustainable!

[JHCC]

On that topic, an interesting article just came out regarding the efforts to locate sufficiently large trees for the restoration of Notre Dame de Paris: 
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/notre-dame-rebuild-oak-trees/index.html

[Ohio]

17 hours ago, Irondragon ForgeClay Works said:

Too old to be hauling, cutting and splitting it to feed the retort..

 With you there, Irondragon. Last winter we had a windstorm that took out a neighbor's large cherry tree that brought down some alders when it landed. We're slowly beavering away at getting it all bucked up. I have some stored for woodturning, another pile for chipping, some for firewood, some for turning into charcoal for putting in Christmas stockings, etc. Oh, my aching back.

I make and use charcoal to forge as part of a woodlands forest management. We have a five-acre parcel and have left two-thirds of it as lowland forest with primarily native species. I have harvested deadfalls and fallen brush for Burnie, my charcoal retort. I also have a neighbor who gave me 200# of black bamboo, most of which is split and chopped for retorting---and he has another 300# for me to turn into charcoal as well. (Yes, it's been split as well as chopped---don't want any unintentional explosions.)

The challenge is to find a way to "chunk" the feedstock into the right size for the retort. I keep pondering building a wood chunker so I can chunk the pieces directly into the retort and then fire the retort. Haven't done it, not yet, at least, not only because of time but because it requires an investment in machinery I'm not sure I want to make. Regardless, I have plenty of feedstock stored up for this spring's charcoalification all done with small chainsaws, machetes, and bad language.

For me, charcoal is a viable forging fuel because I Iive where there are a lot of trees. There's always a tree that has, is about to, or just did come down. TP makes some excellent points about coppicing, etc., as a means for getting feedstock for charcoaling. The raw material is there, but the amount of labor to go from feedstock to charcoal...see the aforementioned backache.

So I get why someone wouldn't want to make the charcoal for their forge: you want to heat steel and smash it with a hammer, not grub around with stupid tree parts.

[JHCC]

That’s what apprentices are for.

[ThomasPowers]

Don't forget *minions*!

[Ohio]

Where do I get these minions of which you speak?

Out here in the sticks, people who are interested in blacksmithing (they all wants to make knives and swords---which should be pronounced with the "w" just to annoy) all go propane. They try forging something and then quit. It's sad, actually. I try to be supportive by telling them, truthfully, that I am the worst smith in the history of fire. Doesn't seem to help, though.

I understand why someone would look for fuel other than charcoal, I really do. And I understand why someone would want to order a truckful of charcoal rather than make it themselves. If I thought there was an actual business opportunity (and not just more backbreaking work) in making and selling charcoal, I'd consider it, but there isn't.

[arkie]

Ohio, I think Royal Oak and Kingsford, for example, have already explored (cornered) the actual business opportunity and seem to be doing quite well.  They won't sell bulk to consumers without business ID's, etc., as Steve and I have been discussing......

[anvil]

14 hours ago, JHCC said:

restoration of Notre Dame

Thanks for this article. If I were 20 years younger, I'd be headed to France to see if I could be apart of the blacksmithing restoration. What an opportunity. 

[BillyBones]

On 3/26/2021 at 8:49 AM, JHCC said:

coppices

twice now before the coffee kicked in i have read that as "codpiece", gives a whole different perspective there.

[JHCC]

That is NOT an area where you want radical pruning.

[Ohio]

On 3/26/2021 at 6:57 PM, arkie said:

Ohio, I think Royal Oak and Kingsford, for example, have already explored (cornered) the actual business opportunity and seem to be doing quite well.  They won't sell bulk to consumers without business ID's, etc., as Steve and I have been discussing......

Sorry, I missed this earlier. That you are complaining about not being able to get the product you want without doing extra stuff...well, there's profit in pain. That's what I was thinking about: selling locally-sourced sustainable charcoal in the right size for blacksmithing to whoever wants to buy it.

I did a bit of research on what it would cost to start up as well as to make a variety of charcoal products other than for cooking or smoking with it. There are several other things I do/can/could manufacture, I'm in a good part of the country to sell specialty products (and already do with our apiary), and I have experience with that kind of stuff. But honestly, I don't think there's enough money to offset the un-funness of making charcoal. Maybe I'll change my mind when I start Burnie the retort back up. I like the pyrolysis part---that's neato---but I don't like the mess enough to do it for money.

[ThomasPowers]

We can buy 40# sacks of Mesquite charcoal fairly easily down here near the border.  Unfortunately it's geared for cooking and so not completely charred to allow for more mesquite smoke flavoring.  It also tends to have resin pockets that make a lot of forge fleas.  Worst part of using it it that it makes you ravenous for steak or ribs or salmon or...

[JHCC]

Ohio, you could always bag anything under 1/4” and sell it to organic gardeners as biochar soil amendment. 

[Ohio]

That mesquite stuff is a dang fire hazard, more than usual. I bought some to give my crappy blacksmithing projects the lovely flavor of the Southwest and it fireflea-ed all over the place.

I made some biochar. I won't tell you how I inoculated it because some things should be Left Unsaid. I used a little electric chipper shredder I had for some other experiment and it worked really well except for the dust. I was trying it to see if I could get the charcoal even smaller for another product idea, which didn't work, but I went ahead and used the stuff I had for the biochar. I ended up adding it to the acreage around the apiary when I was fertilizing with composted manure.

What I learned was that it's way easier to chunk up the feedstock before tossing it in the retort. I actually drew up a production line that would screen out the blacksmithing bits from the biochar bits and the really small bits used for other products. It's fun to think about that kind of stuff but oy vey, there's no way around how much work it would be on such a small scale. Irondragon is so right---it's the chainsawing and hauling that is brutal. Loading the retort isn't so bad but emptying is torturous.

[arkie]

Ohio, I see your point about making charcoal suited toward the blacksmithing and non-restaurant/cooking market.  The latter is more oriented to the high quality, "flavored smoke" crowd and as some have mentioned, not completely charred with some wood left over for smoking.  Blacksmiths just want plain charcoal, nothing special, just about any old scrap or salvage wood, not mesquite, hickory, apple, etc. as a specialty.  Strip away the fancy wood approach, upscale marketing paper bagging, advertising, etc. which would eliminate a lot of overhead expense.  I could envision you obtaining wood from clearing operations for homes, malls, roads, etc. where the cut wood is something they have to dispose of.

I'll try to make a short story long here....many years ago when I was in college and wanted to make some extra $$ through the summer, I decided to try to market mesquite chunks for BBQ and smoking.  We lived in W. Texas which is mesquite country.  The ranchers hate it and would gladly let anyone have all the mesquite they could haul off for free.  I though I would buy a chain saw, rent a pickup and cut mesquite til the cows came home.  Just before I launched off on my dream venture, I happened to be walking through the grocery store, and there on a shelf were bags of mesquite chunks, the first I had ever seen marketed.  My hopes were shattered when the bags carried the name of "Hoss Cartwright, of Bonanza Fame", star of one widely viewed, highly popular TV western serial at the time!!  And, Dan Blocker, who was Hoss in real life, was a W. Texas native and local boy.  You think I would stand a chance competing with Hoss Cartwright???  No way.  Glad I didn't spend the $$ on a chainsaw yet!

[Frosty]

Ohio, Darlin: You live in woodlands and folks are building, builders need the land cleared. Being as Washington is timber country I'm sure you could find a used "feller buncher" for reasonable.

A little creative building to turn bunched wood into suitable sized pieces and chain fed into a large retort. There to the automatic bagger of course. The only back breaking would be checking the oil when you fuel up. Hard labor is always best done from the operator's seat.

I'll bet local teens will stack sacks on pallets for shipping in exchange for dirty language lessons.

A U T O M A T I O N. Hmmm?

Frosty The Lucky.

[Ohio]

Frosty, my dude, there is so much feedstock it would make even you weep. And I have my tree guy who chops and chips and a firewood operation just over yonder (end of the gravel road, take a right and there they are). It's the building of a chunker to chop the stuff that people don't want as firewood into the right size that gives me pause. Could I build one? Yes. Could I buy one? Yes. The chunked material would go through a series of screens to get the crap out, and into the retort/charcoal cooker. Cook it all up, back through the screens to sort, and bagged. All doable. But who do I sell it to?

I'm not kidding when I say every blacksmith I know uses propane out here. Those of us that don't are few and far between, so I don't see breaking even trying to serve this market. But I might be able to make the other products to even it out. I've even thought that given the wildfires we had last summer---air quality was horrid---I could even pitch the idea of making charcoal as carbon capture and wildfire mitigation or prevention, which is a good message out here in hippie land. But the smell of the retort when you open it up. I don't barf easy but that smell seriously makes me want to and watching people barf is only funny if it isn't you.

arkie, in one of my lines of work, we call that Hoss situation an opportunity. He's making the market and having to pave the way tog et people to consider cooking with mesquite. You follow behind. Your overhead regarding marketing would be considerably lower as you surf his brand and sell at a lower price, making your margins healthier. You're not competing with Hoss, you're competing with Kingsford. Hoss is just going to break ground for you.

[Frosty]

Well, if you're going to keep making up reasons it won't work you should maybe make a propane forge instead. At least maybe I can help with THAT. <sniff>

Maybe you can market wood chunkers to the other wood cutters around you! Yeah, that's the ticket!

Frosty The Lucky.

[Ohio]

Heh. I'm good making charcoal for my own use. I got a chainsaw, machete, and Burnie the retort. I still have to do a couple batches before summer is here---don't want to burn anything outside when it's dry.

Re: Chunkers, Inc. My neighbor/pal wants to build one because he loves crap like that. He has a rock crusher already (which is pretty fun, I will admit) and this is his thing. He, of course, is the same neighbor who set himself on fire a couple years ago---dude's over 70, you'd think he'd have some sense, but nooooo. Anyway, it'd be fun, but I had to impose a rule about only buying and building stuff I'll actually use. I know---insane, not normal, and clearly a sign I'm a communist or something.

[Frosty]

3 hours ago, Ohio said:

He, of course, is the same neighbor who set himself on fire a couple years ago--

What's that supposed to mean? Seriously, who doesn't every now and then?

Frosty The Lucky.