Grinding Charcoal Twice As Quickly! But How Fast Can We Go?! 

what i got wrong for the first months watching your channel was: i thought everything is final. but now i know its a process. I love being part of this journey and i respect the crative work! thank you <3

Never apologize for giving us content! We're always appreciative to see how your projects are coming along.

literally just film whatever you do and talk about it as you do it, i'd watch it as would everyone else. you live a charming hard worked life that you built for yourself, are well educated in the art of working within limitations, and your whole operation is basically the american dream. Being able to provide somethng for one's family on their own terms is something most of us wish we could do.

Ah you considered the rock crusher approach, that is where I was leaning toward. Yet, you have proven your approach to work well. One thing I would try is reversing your blades so you save the sharp side for cutting your wood and the back side for crushing your charcoal. Not sure if you would want to put a dull blade grind on that back side, but I bet you could even have it square and it would probably work fine and not dull your fine blade edge. 11 minutes a wheelbarrow load is mighty fine! Like you said it may not be commercial but it is a boutique bonanza for the small producer. Since you have perpetual motion going for you, you could have an army of these tables in a line being fed by trained monkeys. I was watching an old video of a pail workshop in Italy maybe? It was all ran with water power, the hammers, snippers, etc. We lost that simplicity somewhere along the way. I think your finding it once again.

Bridging would be a problem for a wide hopper, but if you kept the sides straight vertical and made the hopper several feet tall, that would keep bridging minimal and allow you to use the weight of the charcoal itself to push the charcoal against the blade (rather than needing a squisher).

@Way Out West - Workshop Stuff

Always makes me smile when a new video comes out :)

I just love your presentation style. Reminiscent of Oliver Postgate narrating classic programmes like Pogles Wood, Bagpuss and Noggin the Nog. You are obviously extremely talented but have the ability to come across as an enthusiastic amateur which engages people who may feel out of their depth watching an out and out professional. It certainly works for me. 👍

Nice one Tim. If you leave 2 inches of charcoal in the hopper, stop the machine, then light the charcoal you've got an instant barbeque😁. A dual purpose machine!

Happy Friday everyone

Every time you spin up The Wheel it's just terrifying to watch.

I can't wait to see one day the whole production line in work. From the moment lorry dumps the load of branches near your railway, through chopping, drying, cooking, grinding, packaging, transporting and selling. How long do you expect the batch turnaround to be? How many batches are you aspiring to produce say within a month (giving you would do nothing but that). Isn't drying a bit of a bottleneck? Keep up awesome content.

A plate crusher probably would be quite good for this kind of crushing, wet material isn't really a huge problem for them unless the material is particularly sticky. I used one quite a lot for metallurgical samples, rock and soil. It never really got clogged except when it was fed big chunks of wet clay. Even then it still slowly cleared the clay, but ended up speeding it up by ramming that through with a 2x4.

I only wish I had the time and resources, to f*** around like you do figuring stuff like this out for myself…. What a fun channel to watch.

I use a crappo Bosch "gear pump"-type garden mulcher for my charcoal (works like an automotive oil pump). It might be a bit quicker than yours, but your final product looks more consistent (so far as I can tell from the image on my phone screen!). I'm not sure if these mulchers are still sold, since they're bloody hopeless for their intended purpose of mulching wood -- but as they're geared down to work very slowly, they do surprisingly well processing charcoal (for my modest needs on a small-holding). Although I imagine that your CNC plasma cutter could easily knock out a couple of giant "gears" for a bigger version of this type of system (should you wish to explore such an approach).

5 and a bit barrows and hour seems reasonable to me. Love the ideas process and simplicity!

This is some backyard engineering and i love it

Cool video. The story of this grinder is more gripping than most netflix boxsets.

I use an old mighty mac style hammer mill. I built a custom rotor, swinging 32 "leaf spring steel" .25x3.5x2 hammers/knives. It spins slowly, 200-500rpm, powered by a 6hp engine with 4.5 to 1 belt reduction. I also made an adjustable outlet "screen" with removable leaf spring steel slats that can rattle around slightly to reduce clogging. Biochar is surprisingly abrasive. The old truck springs I used were annealed, cut and drilled easily, reheated to dull red, then hardened in oil and tempered back to "straw color" . I use it for compost/char/soil mixing too. It can chip biochar nearly as fast as I can shovel. Chip sizing is not as consistent as yours, but close. It will still clog if the biochar is too wet.

I never thought I would become an expert on charcoal grinding.