Grae
it was relatively easy to get set up my ex's dad had everything I needtd on site of course he did live in a junk yard.
As for time it took several hours to char a 30 gallon can completely. There is a lot of moisture, wood alcohol ect. that has to be burned off in a piece of wood to turn it into charcoal. As for how much charcoal it made, it made a full 50 lbs grain bag. I can't really say how much is weighed because it was very light for the volume of charcoal you obtained. One thing to note is the fire had to be completely burned out cold before you could open the charcoal barrel. In fact I would let the fire in the drum burn out completely then remove the char coal barrel from it and make sure it was completely cold before opening which took several hours. The reason for this is I had made char cloth before (for catching sparks when making flint and steel fires) and if you open the tin or in this case the barrel too soon the charcoal is still super heated and exposure to air would cause it to burst into flame!
I tried several woods, pine burned very hot but cracked and snapped relentlessly. Hard wood didn't snap or and was denser charcoal so I think it put out more BTU overall but the pine put out heat faster so I would use the pine to get the hardwood charcoal going in my forge. As for gunpowder I thought about making it but the best charcoal for that is willow or alder wood and I didn't have any of that around.
I also bought manufactured natural charcoal at the hardware store and it coast about $15 per 25 lbs bag. But since I had all the free wood scraps around and my ex's dad was a bit of a tinkerer it worked out great.
I am now thinking of making a new blacksmith shop after a long hiatus in blacksmithing but instead of charcoal make a Natural gas forge and convert it to methane! Many blacksmiths now use propane forges but as I might be living on a farm soon and I thought building a methane digester for horse waste would be a great idea and convert a propane forge to methane. The major difference is the size of the gas apertures.
But we shall see I am not sure where I am going to end up at this point.
Brother in Arms
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