Charcoal burning by Trish

[Rod Taylor]

Just read the article by Trish on a lightweight charcoal burning system which looks very promising for our wood.

I noted the comment on fumes ignighting from the 'holes' and would be interested in the position and size of these for an optimum burn to save a load of trial and error (and waste of drums). Any further detail on the system would be much apreciated.

[dosantos]

Hi Rod

We actually followed Darren's instructions via the swog blog ( harcoal good or bad)a few months back.

The holes are half inch holes, six inches apart. Let us know if you need anymore help or would like to come and see ours.

Regards

Brian Dos Santos

[steve rollnick]

I found this posting, and this is a call to revive Greyman from any grumpy kelleykettle talk, in the form of a more solid request for wisdom, from him or anyone else:

Ive got a small oil drum working well I think, but I wonder about the kids of wood to use. I got a shock last week. I used to use nicely seasoned hard wood, thinking this was best. it usually took 4-5 hours before the smoke changed colour and I could close it down. Then last week I tried some seasoned larch - softwood. It took two hours, and I was able to able to empty the drum and do another round all in one lazy day in the wood. I checked it out last night on the braai (BBQ), and it worked very well.

Tell me, do you guys use soft wood? I also wonder about green unseasoned wood? What would happen if i used that?

Cheers and thanks, Steve

[greyman]

Wha-hay! Green unseasoned wood! Marvlyous! Man after me own heart by the sound of it.

I'm sure there's plenty out there as will tell you yer can't use soft wood or green unseasoned wood etc. From what I've worked out the mix of woods can be almost anything - it will just affect the quantity and the burning times & quality (from my humble experience that is). As for using 'green, unseasoned wood' what had you in mind - obviously the drier the better as you don't have to use so much wood to creat the heat to burn off the water and the volatiles but you can use ash that is still a bit green in my small kiln without too much loss. I guess if you used the retort kiln method (Google it and you'll find oil drum retort methods to illustrate) all you'd be doing is burning up lots of yer waste wood to get the temperature up to boil off the water and get to the point of no return (so to speak).

Well that's my 16th century opinion any way. Really wierd you mention a Braai - I posted an answer to your last post on the Kelly Kettle saga where I made light of the dampish weather Wales is reputed to suffer from...

Greyman

[Steve Medlock]

Despite setting up my oil drum kilns well over a year ago, I only did my first burn 3 weeks ago. I used well seasoned chestnut and closed down after about two and a half hours. I was amazed how well it had worked. A very small amount of browns from a few oversize logs and a good yield.

Really keen to do the next one now.

Steve.