A year ago I became interested in making charcoal at home; partly because I read an article about the Amazon and how the Indians had enriched the soil with charcoal, and partly because I prefer cooking on a charcoal grill and am tired of paying $7 a bag for real lump charcoal (not briquettes) at the store. Charcoal is made by baking wood in an oxygen deprived environment. One crude way of doing it is to take a 55 gal. drum and place a trashcan full of wood in it with the lid on the can. Poke holes in the bottom of the can so that gases from the wood can escape and light a fire in the 55 gal. drum. For the first 3 hours just keep the heat going. Not much happens. somewhere around the 3 to 4 hour mark all hell breaks loose. The gases from the wood are forced out the holes in the bottom of the can and they ignite. Wow do they ignite! After all of it burns away and you let it all cool off you have charcoal in the can. It was a big success. The charcoal cooks down to about 40% or 50% of the original volume. 2 videos are below, one in this post and one in the previous post. Also some still pictures can be seen at: http://picasaweb.google.com/lowell.a.moore/CharcoalMaking?authkey=Gv1sRgCLX10JTYz4H6Bg&feat=directlink
If you want to know more about enriching your garden with charcoal then use the search term: Terra Preta. You won't be sorry.
I also want to thank Michael at http://centralfloridagarden.blogspot.com/
for getting me inspired to take action.
Lowell
