How to Turn Wood into GOOD Charcoal! 

Ya gota love it !

What?

How did the wood in the pit burn without air? I understand excluding air is necessary to making charcoal, but to turn the wood into charcoal there must have been a fire somewhere. I've been making my own charcoal, but making other products like wood tar would also be interesting.

@@patrickcleburneuczjsxpmp9558 The air was precisely regulated: there were openings in the lower part of the tar pit which were sometimes opened and closed again with wet peat. The progress of the fire, i.e. the "ripening" of the tar pit was monitored e.g. about the formation of smoke and how much tar flowed from the tar gutter. At first there was tar water, later pure tar.

nice idea, ty!

For my Flint & Steel I char punk wood, the punk wood must be spongy, if not it won't work. I char and keep the punk wood in a tin, strike sparks into the tin of charred punk wood and hold my birds nest (Tulip popular inner bark, cedar bark grapevine bark, dry grass etc) into the tin and blow on it until I get flame. I did this because when our ancestors went into the wilds they didn't tear their shirts up when they ran out of char cloth. All you need is the steel, the forest can provide everything else to make fire.

@@MrOldzimm Very interesting. I'll keep that in my memory bank. I thought that they would keep every scrap of warn out clothing to use as char cloth, but the punk wood makes sense as you would never run out of it.

Yes sir, char cloth is a great way to use old scraps of Tshirt or jeans

I would like to see more of your videos on what you do outside of work

son dos bariiles cada uno con un pequeño agujero encima y uno pequeño en la base para poca entrada de oxigeno y poca salida de co2 asi la madera quema sin combustionar con mucho oxigeno asi se produce el carbon ,podria tardar unas 4 o 5 horas pero erl producto es carbon ,si el barril tiene poca entrada de oxigeno la madera no se transforma rapidamente en ceniza sino que se transforma en carbon ,se pone la madera dentro del barril se prende fuego dentro del barril y cuando empiece a arder la madera se tapa con la tapa de arriba y se coloca el aro sellador ,se abre los pequeños agujeros el de la tapa y el de la base de preferencia un centimetro encima de la base para que el oxigeno entre y que pueda salir un poco de co2 por la tapita de arriba o el agujero de la tapa de arriba y se espera a que el humo sea menos denso despues de 4 o 5 horas cuando el humo sale mas blanco ya esta listo el carbon,no es necesario dos barriles puedes empezar con uno ,supongo que esas barreras de cemento son para que el carbon conserve el calor mas tiempo y este listo mas rapido,creo que con eso se puede jugar un poco pero la tapa de entrada de oxigeno debe ser lo mas pequeña posible

What are you suggesting..... that we have glass bottles that are in reusable timber crates that can be returned washed and reused.... you are way ahead of the curve, that kind of thinking will have you in the mental home for the crazy.... yes I am old and remember such things.. 🤔😀😎🇦🇺👌

@@rodmills4071 When I was growing, a local pop (soda, coke, soda pop whatever you call it) actually did just that. It was just a town club pop store. Had wooden crates, you pick the ones you want, mix and match all the flavors. Deposit on the bottles and crate, bring them back and get another crates. It's the only company that still uses glass bottles too but the stores and wood crates are long gone.

My father did that with boxes of nails.

My senior year in high school, my best friend and I got out of school about two hours earlier than most on a work study program. This was when the drinking age was 18 and my bestie had been left back a year or two so he was 18 at the end of our junior year. In addition, you could still get Lone Star Beer in returnable long necks. The local drive through beer store sold a case of Lone Star for $2.95 if you had a case of bottles to return. So we’d get out of school, hit the brew-thru and get a case of cold beer and head for Wilson Park which was a few blocks from school. We’d start drinking and wait for everyone else to get out of school. We’d then start selling beers for 50 cents a piece. We got free beer and gas money and our friends got to have a cold one on their way home. It was a win win for everyone.

Graduating HS in 2000 almost all of the furniture in our college houses in WI were made out of returnable Leinenkugels returnable beer boxes. They were amazingly strong cardboard boxes and whenever money was short we would just bring a bunch of them back to any liquor store to get a refund of $1.50 per box. I miss those and the beer tastes so much better in a bottle vs a can

"By changing inlets to chimnies, you can control the burn, ensuring completion and limiting the amount of the charge that you actually burn to make the charcoal." can you explain that further? I do not understand. Thanks for the info

@@AnxiousCowboy All your ports are the same and there are usually 8. You light the kiln for the 'free burn' phase and all ports are open. Air goes in the ports (you light through a port as well) and air and smoke come out of the top of the kiln where the lit is held up by logs to leave a good gap. Free burn makes a lot of smoke usually white due to all the steam. Free burn boosts the temperature. I used to run a small kiln - big surface area to volume ratio. That means you have a lot of heat loss so a long, hot free burn is good and also good to reduce burn time. We used to burn with the help of volunteers who like to go home after about 6 hours, basically at the point you shut the ports down and seal the lid. We used to 'overfill' so that the lid was about 4-6" above the rim. Each port has an open end facing out and a spigot facing up. Chimnies go on each alternate spigot to make four and the outlet gets blocked, usually with a brick and some seived soil or sand. The inlets get left as, well, inlets and air goes in. You move the chimnies round so you ensure conversion near the initial inlets. Note you can see in the inlets and monitor burning. If you get a chimney that smokes less or an inlet which burns slower, you can turn the chimney into an inlet or the inlet into an outlet. If you have a breeze blowing that causes the burn to be one-sided, you can move all the chimneys to the upwind side. By altering chimney placement you can ensure that the burn is as efficient as possible and complete as possible.

Could pipe the gasses back into the fire " turbo "

Our grow bed in the green house are heated with our waste wood. Boss Man.

yes id also like to know are there any holes in the round metal drums

​@@MrRasZee They didn't answer but I can answer for them: They let the pressure leak out, but don't allow air in as much as possible,. Otherwise, it's just a fire that will burn it all down. You can pipe the gases escaping back into the fire - that is called a "retort". Once the moisture is driven off, the gases coming out of the wood are flammable and can be used to cook the wood inside the barrels. Piping the hot gases complicates things a bit though

Sounds like a great video idea. Boss Man.

Good idea!!!

I thought you had to use smokeless powder for modern guns.

Yeah, you can also make saltpeter the old fashioned way. Google that for a little bit of gross education. 😁

This might be a good basis for collaborating with multiple Black Powder channels.