[TheForge] charcoal question

[Jerry Frost]

When you're making charcoal you want the wood to be of 
reasonably uniform size or small pieces burn up before 
the larger pieces are pyrolized. If you had a 
completely anerobic retort it wouldn't matter as 
nothing would happen after it's charcoal. Charcoal 
briquettes are made with shredded wood but are a 
byproduct of wood alcohol production. I'm sure they're 
extracting other things as well now but wood alcohol is 
how it got started. After WWII there were small 
mountains of charcoal powder laying around taking up 
space and some bright guy thought of compressing it 
into briquettes and selling Americans on cooking 
outdoors.

Anyway, keeping the wood of uniform size means 
basically having at least one uniform dimension. For 
instance length and width don't matter as long as it 
all has about the same thickness. For the backyard 
collier 3" or less is the magic number.

Frosty
-------------------------------
If it ain't forged
it ain't real.
Wrought iron is.
The FrostWorks

Meadow Lakes, AK.


From: "Bruce Freeman" <freemab222 at gmail.com>


> I've heard of doing it, but have never tried it 
> myself.  How important
> is the size.  What about using the small chunks 
> (MAYBE 1/2" thick)
> that are kicked out by a chipper?
>
> Bruce
> NJ
>