Great video again. Coal was produced in Finland by digging a hole or pit in the ground, it was filled with wood and covered with wet peat. When it was ignited, somebody had to watch it nights and days and watch that the peat does not burn. They also got wood tar from the same pit. Wood tar was used to protect wooden ships from rotting. Millions of barrels of tar was exported from Finland every year. Coal was used in steel industry in Finland, it was'nt exported.
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.
This was so fun to watch! I live on a large game farm in Zambia 🇿🇲. When we're not busy, I also cut fallen trees into planks and make charcoal with the offcuts almost exactly like that haha
What I found in making charcoal and also char cloth is the gases thrown off are highly flammable. With that in mind, those gases can be piped off to a burner to use to cook with while making the char or to run a boiler for hot water and or steam to run a small steam turbine that drives a generator. It may seem extreme and a waste of time to some. But in these days of higher costs for EVERYTHING, any lowering of daily operational costs for doing what we rely on is like money in the pocket. Maybe chump change at first, but it sure does add up when you are doing it everyday. And powder carbon for the crops is known as "sweetening the soil". Glad to see y'all doing that.
During the char production process flammable organic compounds (and H2), called wood gas, are driven off which can be used as fuel (running a wood gas powered vehicle or generator, for example). Also, the little stainless steel wood gasifier stoves you can purchase online very inexpensively burn the wood gas at secondary heated air vents at the top of the combustion chamber, which is why they are smokeless and very efficient at operating temperature. After the organic compounds are driven off heat from combustion of the remaining char can be useful for keeping a pot simmering (CO burns cleanly at the secondary air vents). Those are great little stoves for camping or emergency prep, enabling cooking and water purification with a remarkably small quantity of twig bits or small chunks of wood. You can also take 100% cotton cloth place it in a metal container with some holes poked in it and then heat it to drive off volatile compounds leaving char cloth which is useful for catching the spark from a ferro rod when starting a fire.
For the small chunks and powder they may be mixed with a little water and compressed in a form to make briquettes or any form you like (air holes make better burning)
Hi there, Emerald. Thank everyone in your family for the wonderful videos y’all present every week; totally different type of working system than what I grew up around . Ours were mostly farming, some road work in the county, and even worked on a cow ranch. Your family is a prime example of an amazing hard-working group of talented people that everyone should try to emulate. At 3::02, here in Texas we call the ring for the barrel a ‘locking ring’. Continue the great work videos with all the different content. Keep Safe & Healthy!!!
I make my own charcoal in a 55gal drum. You must have a few small holes to allow the wood gas to vent. It usually takes 5-6 hours for it to cook off but when there are no more jets of flame coming from the vents, its done. The large splits may be why it takes more burns.
All those slag cuts of bark and timber also make great charcoal. Doesn't always need to be chunky split wood, when you can layer in such 2-3 inch x 12 - 14 inch width x nn inch length slabs and they come out in the same 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 thick processed charcoal slabs that stack easy in a box ... and can be put into a fireplace at any angle for burning - and achieve the same amount of airflow and heat. A good process for all that slab wood that would otherwise go for pennies as cut firewood sections.
Btw, it's fantastic to see you show such respect to someone's choice not to be involved in the filming thing 🙏🙏 youre doing a better job of that than many, many ppl on tv...
First time I've ever seen charcoal made like this. I seen artists charcoal (for drawing) made in a sealed can in a bonfire, but volume charcoal in the UK is usually made in a ring kiln or (increasingly) in a retort. In a ring kiln, you use a proportion of the 'charge' in the kiln to fire the process. You can tell when the charcoal is 'done' when the smoke from the chimnies goes colourless or blue. You shut down then. Ring kilns are made of steel sheet, usually with a conical lid. air inlets are ports at ground level, often eight per kiln. Ports can be changed to chimnies by inserting a steel tube that is longer than the height of the kiln. 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. Looks like good charcoal though..... Thanks for posting.
"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.
Emerald thanks for the tour an explanation of your charcoal process. Putting every part of the tree to good use is great! Hope the weekend is great for the family! And, I love my shirt, it came Saturday! Great quality and design!
I've made Char Cloth (think Lewis and Clark, with a flint and steel to make a spark), using the same method, of corse on a much smaller scale. Amazing that the cloth as well as your wood does not turn to ash, but retains most of its shape and burns so hot after the process.
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.
If you grind the charcoal to powder, mix it with potassium nitrate and sulfur you can make you own gun powder. I do this and use it in my black powder firearms.
Hello , Im new. I would like to suggest you pound down the bottom of A steel drum slant it towards the middle and punch through a small hole in the bottom center. Bury a coffee can to the brim and set the hole over it on the ground, build the fire around the barrel like usual full with the lid, typically in one burn most of the oils will drain off as pitch, into the can below and will turn to coal faster because you dont have to Burn Off all the unwanted chemicals... Makes Great pitch, also saleable.
a few years back, my daughter and I went for a trip north to maine. We ended up at a place called The Katahdin iron works. its the entry way into the north maine woods, but also a historic site where they used to make iron. there is still one huge stone kiln which was used to make charcoal , and a tall stone chimney thing that was used as a blast furnace to melt the iron ore. very cool what you guys are doing! thanks for video!
Awesome set up, another way to know is done is the steam/smoke coming out of the vent holes should be reduced to a very minimum, almost none, thanks for the video
Your clear voice makes you the perfect presenter for these kinds of videos, very informative and easy to listen to. I'm tempted to use that process to char a barrel of sawdust as a soil additive. Are the barrels vented at all?
@@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
I'm very interested in this. Can you make a video if the entire process of making this coal from start to finish. It's all new to me. Just clips along the process. I didn't understand about having the fire outside of the barrels. I may have misunderstood that. Thank you for all if your videos. I enjoy them. You are tougher than me. I can't do most of the work you do without my wearing gloves.
The metal container won't soak up as much heat as the concrete will. You might be able to create panels using plaster of Paris and perlite. It's an insulative firebrick, but it can't take abrasion. I just do it in 55 gallon drums with an after burner, but that's mostly for the garden at this point. Nice video.
Funny I use charcoal on a regular basis since I grill quite a bit as well and never knew nor did I give a second thought to how charcoal is actually made. This was a real education as are many of the videos you post. Looking forward to more videos this week and thank you for another good one. Mom wasn't interested in giving a tutorial ?
Emerald, you remind me of my niece but where she is flighty you seem down to earth. Good video. I once had a chance to see the same type of charcoal made at Cedar Grove Charcoal. My favorite brand. Man does it burn hot and is perfect for grilling steaks.
Emerald I have found that not many people down here even know what charcoal is used for ,,but here at my house we have never had one gas grill and we buy charcoal made from red oak only,also some of my friends use charcoal to make black powder since it got very hard to get some guys make their own now.
You can use the charcoal powder as the main ingredient in making your own black powder for hunting as well. Lots of uses for charcoal besides fertilizer for your gardens, cooking on a grill. Etc.
Great vid Em, you could recover heat and pipe into your greenhouse and even home either air or water of course you need to make a remote shed. I amend soil as well and also make DIY substrate for my aquariums and emersed plants.
Bring the box back. Reminds me 50 years ago. Get a case of 24 bottles of beer all of it returnable. 3 empty cases got a case of fresh beer. Recycling and green before it was a political thing😎🤷♂️🎅🏻👍🏻👌🏻🙏🏻
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 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
Wonderful post as always, thank you! I've been charring for 10 years now, not as consistently as you guys so your know what you're doing. A couple of ideas you might want to think about: insulate your fire if possible, you could make clay/ash/vermiculite etc. bricks or just throw together a batch of mud and stuff that give you air in the mix, sawdust will work to create air pockets around the burn between the steel box and the concrete blocks. thanks again
Thank you Miss Emerald and Bosslady for this video, Thank you the explanation of the use of the barrels, when producing charcoal. A great additive you this akly Rocky soil of Southern Arizona. Next month gonna pick me up a Orange LCLY hoodie if it's still available. Really nice advertising there BossLady. Thanks again Miss Emerald/ Buck, still miss Ole Bo n Buck but time will tell or not if they will return.
I've been watching a lot of RUclips about biochar. Those are the largest pieces I have seen so far. Thanks for the tip on how you know it's ready. I would like to see the full process in a future video please. Much thanks
A retort works good, but I just harvest the charcoal out of my gasifier that powers my truck. Use it to bbq a lot, and recycle it back into the gasifier and it makes better power and warms up faster. then I get the bonus of not buying gasoline to drive to work every day. Also use it as biochar in the garden. All the liquid volatiles are useful to, concentrated it makes a all natural weed killer. The tar is useful for treating wood as a rot preventive
Biochar! I pay good money to buy Biochar for my soil. Sell it. It aerates the soil, helps it retain moisture, helps the plants absorb nitrogen, and it adds biomass in the form of carbon to the soil. Good stuff! PS: You are probably losing way too much heat with the cement burn box as the heat isn't concentrating on the burn barrels efficiently. The steel box is probably better because the fire is concentrated more around the burn barrels. Just my 2 cents.
have you done side by side controlled tests.... I agree there may be some benefits...but, but, but......lots of question remain about biochar and it's environmental impact from production.... and terra preta is misrepresented and fosters the idea that microbiology likes biochar..... it does not or your water filter would rot...... it may play some role in soil hydrolics and capturing some soluble nutrients moving through the soil..... many questions.
@@georgecrinnion2131 so what have your tests revealed...... I have a 5% of soil made with hardwood char screened to .5-2mm.....and a 7% tests, same as first with 2% coffee biochar added, screened to larges in paint screener (lots of fines with coffee biochar).
line your fire box (cement or steel) with fire brick, that will act as an insulator protecting the firebox but also keeps the fire hotter for the barrels. Now if you can design/set up a fire box that acts as a gasifier too you'll get more fuel out of your fire wood instead of an open top you currently have...it'll also burn of all the volatile from the charcoal wood and use that as another fuel source.
If you live in places where the water isn't drinkable, charcoal is one of the best filters for water besides ceramic you can use if your doing an DIY water filter.
This also works for airflitration, where you make a charcoal slurry, and have an air tube with tiny holes fastened to the bottom of the slurry to allow air bubbles to interact with the slurry to have clean air as a result, pump it into the house for an allergy/polutent free home.
You should try doing it how they do it down in Mexico. They did a big hole in the ground, load it up with wood, stick in a chimney that they use to control the air flow, light it up, and then cover the whole pile in dirt. A few days later, they dig it up and bag it.
Hardwood charcoal are used by blacksmiths for forging metals especially oak, it burns hotter and longer. Great video, glad I happened on your chanell a few months back.
Hi Emerald, thanks for the video, was wondering if next time you could show how you crush the smaller pieces that go into the soil mix? It would give us all a good idea as to the size of your carbon footprint!!! 🤣🤣 All jokes aside great tutorial, very informative, thanks.
Wow, what a fine video!! Lump Charcoal is a good thing to have, cooking meat on it is great as it does not produce "Stagnant Smoke" etc. For Blacksmithing it burns very clean and is great for that. It is kind of labor intensive to make, especially for Blacksmithing. It is a really fine soil amendment for sure.
For a better burn solution, you can use refractory cement (easily made with readily available materials) to make a large oven that the barrels fit in. I would suggest 3 walls and an insulated metal (double walled) door on the side, and then put a top on it, with an adjustable vent (also an adjustable vent on the door). Trap all that heat into the oven, and your burns will be MUCH more efficient, require less fuel, and likely will only require 1 burn. For information about using refractory cement and oven designing for efficiency, look into DIY outdoor pizza ovens
@@davidjavids2431 it would, and it would work well, as the earth would make a "battery" of sorts to store the heat. It would save fuel as well. The refractory cement is just a more efficient material that insulates and keeps all the heat where you want it...into the wood, not into the ground.
Use make charcoal in a dug pit. Size depended how much wood I had. Got a fire going then put logs neatly on. When burning strongly put a sheet of corrugated iron on to cover pit. Then soil on top to seal it all round. Leave for a few days then check. Remove charcoal.
I have always admired the Japanese way of making "white charcoal". Basically put wood in a vessel, seal a cap on it with some small holes in the lid. Turn it upside-down and place it in another vessel, raised slightly. Place all your rubbish wood inside and set it alight. Put a cap and/or funnel over all ,and do a slow hot burn as optimal. Making charcoal is the art of cooking wood, with the absence of air. All the water is cooked out, but the sap and other volatiles are cooked in. The residue fiber, although black, is the essence of charcoal. Not too hot and not too cold. Not too long and not too short. The true art is to end up with it being white, but black is okay for everyday use.
I’m a self taught blacksmith I make my own charcoal I’ve used hardwoods and pine (radiata pine)I haven’t noticed much difference between them in my situation. ps I am from Australia
It's not the air it's trapped water, then it turns to steam expands and boom, same as using metamorphic rocks instead of igneous rock in a hangi, water in the sedimentary rocks causes them to sometimes explode.
Hello Emerald. Good morning from Paris, France. I've read your team presentation, which I found so natural and straightforward. I've had various experiences in personal entrepreneurship, in France and abroad (in Mexico), and I know what it means to fight for a company, with ups and downs. I wish your team the best for the days to come.
Emerald you may want to look at some of the older publications from the Department of Agriculture from various states. I believe NH had plans and directions for a large cement block retort. It would allow you to make larger batches and cut down on your labor and clean up your scrap wood.
Very interesting, I'll have to try this. FWIW, when I used to make 'char cloth' for starting fires using flint and steel at Rendezvous, I used a small tin and poked a small hole in the middle of the lid. As the cloth charred a small flame would appear from the hole and once the flame was gone, the char cloth was done. I also seem to recall smoke coming from the hole too, and that also stopped once the cloth was done. Not sure if the same principle would apply in a large barrel though.
Wow , I had to ask my wife if it was Sunday or not. Before my health went bad I used to make charcoal. Mostly used maple as that tree was shedding branches all the time. It made the food taste better.
@@PerteTotale Well, that's nothing! I heard that using "Maple" can lead to "Exposure", "Pre-Mature Balding", "Reddening of the Proboscis" & "development of a large, protruding abominable area".. Many have also been known to be or become largely fond of "Beer" and "BBQ". Prob all full of toxins....
That ring is called a lock ring. There are two kinds, lever lock rings and bolt rings. If it has a lever on it, it is called a lever lock ring, if it has two holes and a bolt, then it is called a bolt ring. Either lock ring can be used on the same barrel. It actually looks like you had both types of lock rings.
Thank you for dhatring this, it is interesting, one thought, if you could harness the heat from the burn to use for the kiln it would make it more efficient
She never showed how to make the charcoal. Why didn't she tell how they make the charcoal ??? I thought she said in the beginning she would tell that. Well Boogers.
Another use for powder charcoal, make poultice for bee stings, even absorb poison ivy. Mix with ginger ale for the flu, upset stomach, Etc. You can make the powder by putting the charcoal in a blender. That activated charcoal (powder) should be able to sell for $20 a quart by volume. Also good 1st aid treatment for rattle snake venom.
500 or 1000 gallon propane tank. The whole end cap converted to a door. Half dozen 1" pipes welded to the top and a curved pipe to take the smoke back to the under the tank. Build a fire under the tank and get it started, then the wood gasses will help cook the charcoal. It would allow you to cook larger batches of slabs
FWIW, I sent one of my hardwood batches to my state (NC) Ag lab for analysis. Roughly 97% carbon, 2%+ calcium, and lots of trace compounds. I use the TLUD approach in 55G drums in a similar, but different, method.
Steel oxidizes at 500-600 °C. A few cans of high temperature paint used for car exhaust manifolds will keep you burner racks from rusting out so fast.
Thanks!
Great video again. Coal was produced in Finland by digging a hole or pit in the ground, it was filled with wood and covered with wet peat. When it was ignited, somebody had to watch it nights and days and watch that the peat does not burn. They also got wood tar from the same pit. Wood tar was used to protect wooden ships from rotting. Millions of barrels of tar was exported from Finland every year. Coal was used in steel industry in Finland, it was'nt exported.
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.
I would like to see the entire process.
This was so fun to watch! I live on a large game farm in Zambia 🇿🇲. When we're not busy, I also cut fallen trees into planks and make charcoal with the offcuts almost exactly like that haha
What I found in making charcoal and also char cloth is the gases thrown off are highly flammable. With that in mind, those gases can be piped off to a burner to use to cook with while making the char or to run a boiler for hot water and or steam to run a small steam turbine that drives a generator. It may seem extreme and a waste of time to some. But in these days of higher costs for EVERYTHING, any lowering of daily operational costs for doing what we rely on is like money in the pocket. Maybe chump change at first, but it sure does add up when you are doing it everyday. And powder carbon for the crops is known as "sweetening the soil". Glad to see y'all doing that.
Could pipe the gasses back into the fire " turbo "
During the char production process flammable organic compounds (and H2), called wood gas, are driven off which can be used as fuel (running a wood gas powered vehicle or generator, for example). Also, the little stainless steel wood gasifier stoves you can purchase online very inexpensively burn the wood gas at secondary heated air vents at the top of the combustion chamber, which is why they are smokeless and very efficient at operating temperature. After the organic compounds are driven off heat from combustion of the remaining char can be useful for keeping a pot simmering (CO burns cleanly at the secondary air vents). Those are great little stoves for camping or emergency prep, enabling cooking and water purification with a remarkably small quantity of twig bits or small chunks of wood. You can also take 100% cotton cloth place it in a metal container with some holes poked in it and then heat it to drive off volatile compounds leaving char cloth which is useful for catching the spark from a ferro rod when starting a fire.
For the small chunks and powder they may be mixed with a little water and compressed in a form to make briquettes or any form you like (air holes make better burning)
nice idea, ty!
Hi there, Emerald. Thank everyone in your family for the wonderful videos y’all present every week; totally different type of working system than what I grew up around . Ours were mostly farming, some road work in the county, and even worked on a cow ranch. Your family is a prime example of an amazing hard-working group of talented people that everyone should try to emulate. At 3::02, here in Texas we call the ring for the barrel a ‘locking ring’. Continue the great work videos with all the different content. Keep Safe & Healthy!!!
The Boss Lady got it right . The retention device is called a "ring". Sometimes called a locking ring.
3:00
We call it a hoop. 🤷🏻♂️
We should BBQ . My mama always said life was like BBQ and a box of chocolates.
Now, let's get cooking so we can get to the dessert.
I make my own charcoal in a 55gal drum. You must have a few small holes to allow the wood gas to vent. It usually takes 5-6 hours for it to cook off but when there are no more jets of flame coming from the vents, its done.
The large splits may be why it takes more burns.
All those slag cuts of bark and timber also make great charcoal. Doesn't always need to be chunky split wood, when you can layer in such 2-3 inch x 12 - 14 inch width x nn inch length slabs and they come out in the same 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 thick processed charcoal slabs that stack easy in a box ... and can be put into a fireplace at any angle for burning - and achieve the same amount of airflow and heat. A good process for all that slab wood that would otherwise go for pennies as cut firewood sections.
Thanks
Cool. Nothing beats cooking outdoors over charcoal. Best flavor there is. Greeting from NW Sullivan co.
Btw, it's fantastic to see you show such respect to someone's choice not to be involved in the filming thing 🙏🙏 youre doing a better job of that than many, many ppl on tv...
First time I've ever seen charcoal made like this. I seen artists charcoal (for drawing) made in a sealed can in a bonfire, but volume charcoal in the UK is usually made in a ring kiln or (increasingly) in a retort. In a ring kiln, you use a proportion of the 'charge' in the kiln to fire the process. You can tell when the charcoal is 'done' when the smoke from the chimnies goes colourless or blue. You shut down then. Ring kilns are made of steel sheet, usually with a conical lid. air inlets are ports at ground level, often eight per kiln. Ports can be changed to chimnies by inserting a steel tube that is longer than the height of the kiln. 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.
Looks like good charcoal though..... Thanks for posting.
"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.
brilliant! every tried trapping the smoke to make wood vineagr?
Emerald thanks for the tour an explanation of your charcoal process. Putting every part of the tree to good use is great! Hope the weekend is great for the family! And, I love my shirt, it came Saturday! Great quality and design!
Any suggestions on how to make charcoal in smaller amounts, specifically for an art material/drawing tool?
I've made Char Cloth (think Lewis and Clark, with a flint and steel to make a spark), using the same method, of corse on a much smaller scale. Amazing that the cloth as well as your wood does not turn to ash, but retains most of its shape and burns so hot after the process.
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
Hard work very impressive, I used to make it in the earth when I was 15 years old, lovely job nice cool and good size
If you grind the charcoal to powder, mix it with potassium nitrate and sulfur you can make you own gun powder. I do this and use it in my black powder firearms.
This might be a good basis for collaborating with multiple Black Powder channels.
Hello , Im new. I would like to suggest you pound down the bottom of A steel drum slant it towards the middle and punch through a small hole in the bottom center. Bury a coffee can to the brim and set the hole over it on the ground, build the fire around the barrel like usual full with the lid, typically in one burn most of the oils will drain off as pitch, into the can below and will turn to coal faster because you dont have to Burn Off all the unwanted chemicals... Makes Great pitch, also saleable.
a few years back, my daughter and I went for a trip north to maine. We ended up at a place called The Katahdin iron works. its the entry way into the north maine woods, but also a historic site where they used to make iron. there is still one huge stone kiln which was used to make charcoal , and a tall stone chimney thing that was used as a blast furnace to melt the iron ore. very cool what you guys are doing! thanks for video!
Awesome set up, another way to know is done is the steam/smoke coming out of the vent holes should be reduced to a very minimum, almost none, thanks for the video
Your clear voice makes you the perfect presenter for these kinds of videos, very informative and easy to listen to. I'm tempted to use that process to char a barrel of sawdust as a soil additive. Are the barrels vented at all?
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
I'm very interested in this. Can you make a video if the entire process of making this coal from start to finish. It's all new to me.
Just clips along the process. I didn't understand about having the fire outside of the barrels. I may have misunderstood that.
Thank you for all if your videos. I enjoy them. You are tougher than me. I can't do most of the work you do without my wearing gloves.
Would love to see you guys grilling so we can see the product in action. 🙂
Sounds like a great video idea. Boss Man.
Good idea!!!
How are you igniting this wood & when do you cover it up in those barrels? How long does it take to bake one barrel?
The metal container won't soak up as much heat as the concrete will. You might be able to create panels using plaster of Paris and perlite. It's an insulative firebrick, but it can't take abrasion. I just do it in 55 gallon drums with an after burner, but that's mostly for the garden at this point. Nice video.
Great job. I just started making biochar for my garden and lump charcoal. Thank you for sharing.
Funny I use charcoal on a regular basis since I grill quite a bit as well and never knew nor did I give a second thought to how charcoal is actually made. This was a real education as are many of the videos you post. Looking forward to more videos this week and thank you for another good one. Mom wasn't interested in giving a tutorial ?
Briquettes that we buy at the store are not made this way. Coal plus chemicals. Don't use that to filter water.
Emerald, you remind me of my niece but where she is flighty you seem down to earth. Good video. I once had a chance to see the same type of charcoal made at Cedar Grove Charcoal. My favorite brand. Man does it burn hot and is perfect for grilling steaks.
Emerald I have found that not many people down here even know what charcoal is used for ,,but here at my house we have never had one gas grill and we buy charcoal made from red oak only,also some of my friends use charcoal to make black powder since it got very hard to get some guys make their own now.
question,,,, you burn around the barrels, a secondary fire? and the heat creates the charcoal? would like to have seen making in progress.
To protect the steel of burning through you can try to lay bricks or clay along the perimeter.
What are you using for fuel source to heat the barrels up and do you have any holes in the barrels for venting?
You can use the charcoal powder as the main ingredient in making your own black powder for hunting as well. Lots of uses for charcoal besides fertilizer for your gardens, cooking on a grill. Etc.
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. 😁
You can also reuse the tiny bits by crushing them up and making briquettes
Great vid Em, you could recover heat and pipe into your greenhouse and even home either air or water of course you need to make a remote shed. I amend soil as well and also make DIY substrate for my aquariums and emersed plants.
Our grow bed in the green house are heated with our waste wood. Boss Man.
I like seeing the knowledge that you have of what you want for your business. Good for you. You will be successful.
Bring the box back. Reminds me 50 years ago. Get a case of 24 bottles of beer all of it returnable. 3 empty cases got a case of fresh beer. Recycling and green before it was a political thing😎🤷♂️🎅🏻👍🏻👌🏻🙏🏻
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
Great video I did not know how they made this. would you then use that stuff in your barbecue?
Wonderful post as always, thank you! I've been charring for 10 years now, not as consistently as you guys so your know what you're doing. A couple of ideas you might want to think about: insulate your fire if possible, you could make clay/ash/vermiculite etc. bricks or just throw together a batch of mud and stuff that give you air in the mix, sawdust will work to create air pockets around the burn between the steel box and the concrete blocks. thanks again
Thank you Miss Emerald and Bosslady for this video, Thank you the explanation of the use of the barrels, when producing charcoal. A great additive you this akly Rocky soil of Southern Arizona. Next month gonna pick me up a Orange LCLY hoodie if it's still available. Really nice advertising there BossLady. Thanks again Miss Emerald/ Buck, still miss Ole Bo n Buck but time will tell or not if they will return.
The skills of the past are our future. Thank you, young Lady.
Do you collect and use the flamable wood gases to help heating the wood?
Love it! Emerald, more great teaching. Often I’ve wondered how and now I know. Beautiful stuff by the way, carbon, the building blocks of life!
This is my first video of yours I have seen. It was great, informative and entertaining. I will be checking out more.
One question.... your thoughts on making charcoal from hardwoods vs soft woods.
That much creosote on the barrel...I'd guess they're using softwoods?
Great video. I wonder if a design could be made to Utilize the gasses that you're burning off like in a gasifier 🤔
I've been watching a lot of RUclips about biochar. Those are the largest pieces I have seen so far. Thanks for the tip on how you know it's ready. I would like to see the full process in a future video please. Much thanks
A retort works good, but I just harvest the charcoal out of my gasifier that powers my truck. Use it to bbq a lot, and recycle it back into the gasifier and it makes better power and warms up faster. then I get the bonus of not buying gasoline to drive to work every day. Also use it as biochar in the garden. All the liquid volatiles are useful to, concentrated it makes a all natural weed killer. The tar is useful for treating wood as a rot preventive
Biochar! I pay good money to buy Biochar for my soil. Sell it. It aerates the soil, helps it retain moisture, helps the plants absorb nitrogen, and it adds biomass in the form of carbon to the soil. Good stuff! PS: You are probably losing way too much heat with the cement burn box as the heat isn't concentrating on the burn barrels efficiently. The steel box is probably better because the fire is concentrated more around the burn barrels. Just my 2 cents.
have you done side by side controlled tests.... I agree there may be some benefits...but, but, but......lots of question remain about biochar and it's environmental impact from production.... and terra preta is misrepresented and fosters the idea that microbiology likes biochar..... it does not or your water filter would rot...... it may play some role in soil hydrolics and capturing some soluble nutrients moving through the soil..... many questions.
@@glen.simpson ok.
@@georgecrinnion2131 so what have your tests revealed...... I have a 5% of soil made with hardwood char screened to .5-2mm.....and a 7% tests, same as first with 2% coffee biochar added, screened to larges in paint screener (lots of fines with coffee biochar).
@@glen.simpson Thanks for sharing.
@@georgecrinnion2131 I see you are eager to hear the results!
line your fire box (cement or steel) with fire brick, that will act as an insulator protecting the firebox but also keeps the fire hotter for the barrels. Now if you can design/set up a fire box that acts as a gasifier too you'll get more fuel out of your fire wood instead of an open top you currently have...it'll also burn of all the volatile from the charcoal wood and use that as another fuel source.
If you live in places where the water isn't drinkable, charcoal is one of the best filters for water besides ceramic you can use if your doing an DIY water filter.
Also good for treatment of ingested poisons.
@@jamesmcgrath1952 Just make sure it's natural
And if you drink water with activated charcoal mixed in with it, it also acts as a detoxifying agent for your body
This also works for airflitration, where you make a charcoal slurry, and have an air tube with tiny holes fastened to the bottom of the slurry to allow air bubbles to interact with the slurry to have clean air as a result, pump it into the house for an allergy/polutent free home.
activated carbon it is
that was very informative. The creosote tip was the key. Thanks for sharing.
Sounds kinda high-end, that's some top shelf charcoal.
You should try doing it how they do it down in Mexico. They did a big hole in the ground, load it up with wood, stick in a chimney that they use to control the air flow, light it up, and then cover the whole pile in dirt. A few days later, they dig it up and bag it.
Hardwood charcoal are used by blacksmiths for forging metals especially oak, it burns hotter and longer. Great video, glad I happened on your chanell a few months back.
You can use the wood gas that vents off as it cooks to fuel the fire. Its very flammable.
Hi Emerald, thanks for the video, was wondering if next time you could show how you crush the smaller pieces that go into the soil mix? It would give us all a good idea as to the size of your carbon footprint!!! 🤣🤣 All jokes aside great tutorial, very informative, thanks.
Thank You That Was An Excellent Presentation. Very Informative! I Learned A Lot.
Am i the only guy who clicked on this for the gorgeous girl with beautiful hair then realized it was about making charcoal
I came here for the charcoal.
Wow, what a fine video!! Lump Charcoal is a good thing to have, cooking meat on it is great as it does not produce "Stagnant Smoke" etc. For Blacksmithing it burns very clean and is great for that. It is kind of labor intensive to make, especially for Blacksmithing. It is a really fine soil amendment for sure.
For a better burn solution, you can use refractory cement (easily made with readily available materials) to make a large oven that the barrels fit in. I would suggest 3 walls and an insulated metal (double walled) door on the side, and then put a top on it, with an adjustable vent (also an adjustable vent on the door). Trap all that heat into the oven, and your burns will be MUCH more efficient, require less fuel, and likely will only require 1 burn.
For information about using refractory cement and oven designing for efficiency, look into DIY outdoor pizza ovens
@@davidjavids2431 it would, and it would work well, as the earth would make a "battery" of sorts to store the heat. It would save fuel as well. The refractory cement is just a more efficient material that insulates and keeps all the heat where you want it...into the wood, not into the ground.
Use make charcoal in a dug pit. Size depended how much wood I had. Got a fire going then put logs neatly on. When burning strongly put a sheet of corrugated iron on to cover pit. Then soil on top to seal it all round. Leave for a few days then check. Remove charcoal.
Very informative, May I ask how long does it usually take to pass from wood to charcoal?
Do y'all sell hoodies or apparel? I want to buy.
I have always admired the Japanese way of making "white charcoal". Basically put wood in a vessel, seal a cap on it with some small holes in the lid. Turn it upside-down and place it in another vessel, raised slightly. Place all your rubbish wood inside and set it alight. Put a cap and/or funnel over all ,and do a slow hot burn as optimal. Making charcoal is the art of cooking wood, with the absence of air. All the water is cooked out, but the sap and other volatiles are cooked in. The residue fiber, although black, is the essence of charcoal. Not too hot and not too cold. Not too long and not too short. The true art is to end up with it being white, but black is okay for everyday use.
Do you usually use hard woods for that or can you use pine too?
I’m a self taught blacksmith I make my own charcoal I’ve used hardwoods and pine (radiata pine)I haven’t noticed much difference between them in my situation. ps I am from Australia
@@FeatherHorseforge like Australia, Fight for Freedom!!!!!
pine makes fines charcoal but it burns faster then hardwood charcoal
How hot of a fire around the drum and how long does the process typically take?
Do a video where yall actually fire it up and make it. Maybe time-lapse and narrative style?
I missed the Mom comment the first time. After the dad comment, I went back to hear the video again. Excellent family values.
Emerald got charcoal in her Christmas stocking 🎅
Make Sure Its"""" Turquoise""" and """Silver"" Indian Jewelry !!!! She Loves Indian Jewelry!!!!
A most practical gift!
You go girl, good to see young ones doing good, Keep up the good work.
concrete can explode if there are any air pockets in it, but those blocks look quite high quality, take care.
It's not the air it's trapped water, then it turns to steam expands and boom, same as using metamorphic rocks instead of igneous rock in a hangi, water in the sedimentary rocks causes them to sometimes explode.
Have you thought about loading your batch barrels in a large trash dumpster or a modified connex box?
Young lady, you are getting so good at these videos I wouldn't be surprised if a television station want to hire you! Great information.
Hello Emerald. Good morning from Paris, France. I've read your team presentation, which I found so natural and straightforward. I've had various experiences in personal entrepreneurship, in France and abroad (in Mexico), and I know what it means to fight for a company, with ups and downs. I wish your team the best for the days to come.
Your mom's getting ready to wrap up your Christmas gifts 🎁
😏🤣🙏🏻😎🎅🏻Dirty Jobs. 🤷♂️
Emerald you may want to look at some of the older publications from the Department of Agriculture from various states. I believe NH had plans and directions for a large cement block retort. It would allow you to make larger batches and cut down on your labor and clean up your scrap wood.
Im sorry but i gotta say it!
I love seeing when gorgeous people are doing hard work. 😍
Very interesting, I'll have to try this. FWIW, when I used to make 'char cloth' for starting fires using flint and steel at Rendezvous, I used a small tin and poked a small hole in the middle of the lid. As the cloth charred a small flame would appear from the hole and once the flame was gone, the char cloth was done. I also seem to recall smoke coming from the hole too, and that also stopped once the cloth was done. Not sure if the same principle would apply in a large barrel though.
Wow , I had to ask my wife if it was Sunday or not.
Before my health went bad I used to make charcoal.
Mostly used maple as that tree was shedding branches all the time.
It made the food taste better.
that is the first time I heard about cc maple, as I did not heard about it ever before,
it got to contain some toxics, prob cyano-alike
@@PerteTotale Well, that's nothing! I heard that using "Maple" can lead to "Exposure", "Pre-Mature Balding", "Reddening of the Proboscis" & "development of a large, protruding abominable area".. Many have also been known to be or become largely fond of "Beer" and "BBQ". Prob all full of toxins....
Really nice and informative video. You obviously know your stuff, and love that we now know where the ring sits😂. Great job, thanks from Sweden.
That ring is called a lock ring. There are two kinds, lever lock rings and bolt rings. If it has a lever on it, it is called a lever lock ring, if it has two holes and a bolt, then it is called a bolt ring. Either lock ring can be used on the same barrel. It actually looks like you had both types of lock rings.
Very informative. Does the whole family work at the yard?
You girls are beautiful
Thank you for dhatring this, it is interesting, one thought, if you could harness the heat from the burn to use for the kiln it would make it more efficient
She never showed how to make the charcoal. Why didn't she tell how they make the charcoal ??? I thought she said in the beginning she would tell that. Well Boogers.
Yup she said turn this to that yup that whT she said
She's a woman if she was a logical person she would have been born a man
You have access to the internet and can't find out how?
She absolutely did show how too make it…open your eyes and ears
@@karlmcintyre214 but in a visual learner
When your running your mill how often do you change blades and how many should you keep on hand
Another use for powder charcoal, make poultice for bee stings, even absorb poison ivy. Mix with ginger ale for the flu, upset stomach, Etc. You can make the powder by putting the charcoal in a blender. That activated charcoal (powder) should be able to sell for $20 a quart by volume. Also good 1st aid treatment for rattle snake venom.
great video thanks. the creosote tip is super helpful thank you. biochar is great for compost and garden soil, thanks for showing how you produce it
500 or 1000 gallon propane tank. The whole end cap converted to a door. Half dozen 1" pipes welded to the top and a curved pipe to take the smoke back to the under the tank. Build a fire under the tank and get it started, then the wood gasses will help cook the charcoal. It would allow you to cook larger batches of slabs
The best soil treatment with charcoal one can get is pure terra preta so great knowing how to make charcoal in smaller batches!
I’m a beginner blacksmith. This is one of the better tutorials about this process thanks.
You should line your burn box with fire brick or tile. Basically you are building a kiln of sorts. The brick insulates the metal from the fire.
Quick question: Are the fumes flammable ?
FWIW, I sent one of my hardwood batches to my state (NC) Ag lab for analysis. Roughly 97% carbon, 2%+ calcium, and lots of trace compounds. I use the TLUD approach in 55G drums in a similar, but different, method.