Making Charcoal

Hi
Charcoal plays a very important part in pyro and trying to buy cheap good quality willow charcoal is pretty hard ..
..So my only option is to make it yourself..I have started making some this week and will make as much as i can before i get fed up of debarking the willow ...I have chopped up some old willow tree branches and debarked them and left them out to dry for the last 2 weeks orso..I found that it didnt have to be dry but it stops a lot of smoke when the wood is drier..

...I placed the willow in to a metal box which i made out of mild steel sheeting Willow before atkins diet out of intrest i weighed it on an old bathroom scale to see what yield i would get..
Here you can see the box in the kiln Ready steady cook! ..
One good thing about making your own charcoal with an electric kiln is that you can control the cooking temp very constistantly,so in theory my charcoal should be fairly consistant quality..I used an electronic thermometer to measure the cooking temp..389 centigrade ..

..As you can see the wood starts producing lots of grey smoke..temp was about 390 C..After about 40 minutes the color of the smoke changes to a white/blue colour this is a sign that pyrolysis has begun, i ignite this smoke with lighter and it burns with a yellow sooty flame.Burn Baby Burn!..After about another 40 minutes the fire goes out and there is no more smoke..this indicates that the charcoal is ready and needs cooling down!
Stop Cooking!
Now what you have to do is to stop oxygen getting to the charcoal so what i do is quickly remove the tin from the kiln Turn the box upside down with the lid still on?and cover it with earth..Soil
I leave this to cool down its very important to do this ..here is what happens if you try to rush things.. Ashes to Ashes.. as you can see if oxygen gets too warm charcoal it er burns .. and not much use..Look at all that horrible white ash..

Now look at the nice shiny black charcoal Cooked to perfection and here is my grubby little hands on it Charcoal stick it breaks with a sharp crack and its black all the way through no brown bits of under cooked wood
I weighed it before it was cooked now lets see what it weighs after cooking After atkins diet. . 16 lbs before and about 9 1/2 lbs after so 6 1/2 lbs lighter? Now the tin box weighs about 7 1/2 lbs So i have about 2lb of Willow Charcoal left from 8 1/2 lbs of wood.. So a yeild of about 25% ..


Also going to make some Pine charcoal as that sounds pretty good for producing nice sparks..

sasman

Edited by sasman, 28 February 2005 - 03:54 PM.

You can just use the charcol for the grills but the the BP will be alot slower compared to is you used the charcoal sasman made. It need to be cooked in a atmosphere without oxygen to be quality. Plus, I think it kinda fun to make your own charcoal.

Edited by Sparkler, 10 June 2004 - 03:25 AM.

I collected a load of wood shavings off the garage floor and stuffed them inside an old tabacco tin. I put a hole in the lid of the tin, and placed it upside down in the barbecue. After dinner i dug out my tin, opened it up, and got my carcoal

The only problem is, there isnt much there, hehe

Edited by S.Peter, 10 June 2004 - 09:45 AM.

I can get powdered charcoal for 8 pounds a kilo, but don't need to buy it. I have a large willow tree in my garden, so I just put the effort into cooking it when I want charcoal.

While we're on subject - I've heard reference to harvesting willow at specifc times of the year : "willow is harvested only in the Spring, when the sap is rising and the bark is easily stripped off" I'm a little confused about how the sap content would effect the charcoal performance. Anyone know?

Edited by Creepin_pyro, 10 June 2004 - 11:08 AM.

"willow is harvested only in the Spring, when the sap is rising and the bark is easily stripped off" I'm a little confused about how the sap content would effect the charcoal performance. Anyone know?

I think it means that it is harvested then as the bark is easier to strip as the sap is rising.

Yeah... I just would like to know wether the reason for harvesting at certain times is purely a practical one, to make it easier to process, or if it makes an actual difference to the finished product. Ive never had any troubles stripping bark.

Sap contains dissolved minerals, and it is these that remain as ash after the charcoal burns. For BP, a low ash charcoal is desirable, so the less sap in the wood the better. There isn't much sap in wood in the winter, but the bark is much harder to get off. When the sap starts to flow again in the spring, the bark becomes easy to peel off in sheets. However, AFAIK, the sap that flow in the spring is quite low in dissolved minerals, so doesn't really matter so much anyway. It will just evaporate off. Therefore cutting the wood in spring is better.

If you can be bothered, and are after a "competition grade" black powder, you can strip the bark and chop up the wood, then leave it submerged in (preferably running) water, for several weeks or months, to wash out as much sap as possible.

Aaaahhh..... now I see. Thanks for clarifying that, Phoenix. I'm not quite up to "competition" grade yet (I just love the thought of a BP competition) but it's worth considering for future cooking sesstions.

So if I use normal charcoal from a grill, would that explain the lame, dark gray color, rather than getting the black in black powder?

Not necessarily miniskinny. But beware of BBQ charcoal as most brands contain a high quantity of clay. Look around for lump wood charcoal and not briquettes.

Mark

I made a few batches in the way that S. Peter described, some red wood and some pine, and made a fine batch of black powder, that propelled a tennis ball into the air for about 5 seconds. I don't think that Willow Tree charcoal is the only solution for good charcoal; it's probably the best though.
I'm just waiting for the neighbors to cut down their willow tree

At the risk of sounding reaaaaallllllly dumb, i just use pine charcoal out of my fireplace, my family has three of them so its easier and cheaper for me then cutting down willow trees or buying BBQ bricks, and earier someone said that it had to be burned in a low oxygen environement, how much does this affect overall preformance, my BP burns without residue, not precisely a snap of a fingers but it works.

At the risk of sounding reaaaaallllllly dumb, i just use pine charcoal out of my fireplace, my family has three of them so its easier and cheaper for me then cutting down willow trees or buying BBQ bricks, and earier someone said that it had to be burned in a low oxygen environement, how much does this affect overall preformance, my BP burns without residue, not precisely a snap of a fingers but it works.

Yuo mention using charcoal out of the fireplace which to me looks like you are using something that has been burnt already ? - correct me if I am wrong. What you need is the charcoal before the family have sat down for a quiet evening in front of a nice warm fire and not the left over burnt ash the morning after.

What they mean by burnt in a low oxygen environment is that you take strips of wood and place them in a cake / coffee / biscuit tin with a few holes in the lid. Place the tin on the fire and the wood is super heated inside the tin but can not burn due to the lack of oxygen hence all the moisture is removed and the wood goes black - charcoal.

Have a search on the forum... there is a lot of discusion on the types and ways for making charcoal and pro's and con's of different types.

Mark

sorry dajin, should have been more specific, i didnt mean the ash from the fire, more the partially burnt logs, black and shiny all the way through

Anyone know exactly how good Elm tree wood is in general for pyrotechnics?
Could someone give me sort of a generic chart of best to worst as far as black powder making goes?