Making your own charcoal

[Lorgar]

Anyone make their own? It will be fuel for my forge in the short term until I switch to gas.

Process seems easy enough, short version is fill a steel bin with wood, upside down on the ground with wood inside, burn fire around it.

Specifics like type of wood, size of cuts etc. has been lacking in the information I've found.

I think I'm testing my luck to find anyone doing this but you never know

[Patrol66]

I wouldn't have thought that charcoal was fuel so to speak . Watching your forge experiment with much interest mate

[Lorgar]

I wouldn't have thought that charcoal was fuel so to speak.

Don't ask me mate

It seems counter intuitive I agree, that 'the best' fuel is already burnt wood.

All I can tell you is that it works, as you can see.... That's just pure charcoal chunks in the bottom with a hair dryer fan blowing air into it.



Making your own is not a popular practice judging by lack of replies though

[Pilch]

Making your own is not a popular practice judging by lack of replies though

A 5kg bag is about $10 so no surprise.

Can't be economical to do yourself, only done if you wanted it for the hobby factor.

[Noisydad]

I make willow charcoal for daughters artistic endeavors. For small amounts such as for artwork I make it in a steel box made from 100x100 RHS that has a bolt on lid with a 6mm home in it. The box is packed tight with finger thickness green willow sticks and put in the lounge room wood fire to bake till no more smoke comes out the little hole. Then it's left to cool before opening. For my blacksmith forge I use redgum gum charcoal left in my lounge room fire after the fires gone out. Charcoal floats so it's all dropped in a bucket of water to separate it from the ash. Definately a winter job!

[on_one_wheel]

Making charcoal is something I have dabbled in .. you need to start a good size fire, once you have a good amount of large red coals shovel them into a steel container with a tight fitting lid like a billy can or a metal bin... you need to starve them of oxygen to put tbem out before they burn out, wait until the container is cool ... might be a day or two depending on the size then sieve the ash out. If your bin dose not seal well try covering the top in fine sand or dirt.

[bigfellascott]

So what's the theory behind the charcoal?

[sbd3927]

You will need a hardwood of some sort, comes down to what sources you can arrange. 4x2" offcuts from building (not pine) would be nice. Other wood, the harder and heavier it is the denser the charcoal. Check wood types fuel value ... http://www.thefireplace.com.au/firewood.html

The info you've found on using a steel drum will work, just make sure you seal it well once its finished burning.
A neater system than the upside down drum is a kiln or retort. Search "charcoal kiln pdf"
Eg. http://www.biochar-international.org/si ... ctions.pdf fairly simple and safer than trying to invert burning drums.

[Swarm]

So what's the theory behind the charcoal?

Over wood?

My understanding (basic) of it is that produces more useful energy.

When burning fresh wood energy is spend turning moisture in the wood into gas is one example of waste. You'd have to ask Bill Nye the science guy for a proper explanation but when a fire burns the wood goes through a series of changes in breaking down to reach the actual combustion. That's why it does't just ignite at the touch of a flame. Burning the wood with bugger all oxygen to create charcoal gets the first steps I guess you call them out of the way.

Then when you burn the charcoal it's ready to go strait to combustion. Feel it lots of oxygen and it does this fast and hot.

[Lorgar]

So what's the theory behind the charcoal?

The two fuels I've tried for my forge project so far have been BBQ briquettes and pure charcoal.

The briquettes left some slaggy junk in the bottom and don't burn as...thoroughly I guess you'd say. They're like half a dozen shrinking golf balls on fire underneath the crucible. They take a while to heat up and as they burn create wasted space

The charcoal breaks down and burns throughout, and there are no pockets of air in the bottom of the forge because it crumbles into itself instead of shrinking like the coal. There is a constant solid floor of burning charcoal below the crucible.

It gets up to temp quicker, also burns hotter. Only downside is it burns significantly faster than the briquettes. I guess they have chemicals and whatever they to make them burn a bit slower and they don't need to be crazy hot for cooking.

Even with using more fuel per minute with the charcoal, you can work faster and do more so probably cheaper than running the briquettes and using more anyway.

As for making it, just give something a try too

[Lorgar]

Thanks to everyone else above for the replies too.

Got some blocks of hardwood to give a go next weekend.

[bigfellascott]

Thanks for that Longar, sounds interesting mate, I look forward to seeing how it all works out.

[Lorgar]

Waiting to get down to the scrap place again to pick up 10kg or 20kg of scrap then am ready to give casting a few proper things ago.

[Lorgar]

Got there sooner than I thought.

Supplies!

aluminium-scrap.jpg (35.14 KiB) Viewed 3848 times

And a bunch more bags in the car