Making Charcoal from Scratch

get ice baby it wouldn't work in maths class well actually I'm in me Smith you up at the moment and I'm about to make a new drum to make some charcoal so I thought I'd share the process of how I make the drum and here I'll make the charcoal all you needs a bog-standard 44-gallon drum or 200 liter depending where you are if you can definitely you need the top and if you can get the locking ring as well if you can't get the locking ring doesn't matter that the top will do oh I prefer ones that haven't had a well I mean this has had honey in it or something so it's nice and clean on the inside so you don't want anything that's flammable in the inside a bit all on the bottom at about 50 mil intervals or 200 oh yeah 50 mil holes 200 mil intervals around the outside for that you could use a grinder oh I'm gonna use an oxy torch maybe you got nothing else here's a cold chili [Music] now get another drum doesn't matter what state it's in and you want to cut the top and the bottom off so if it's got a top if it's gonna have a top leave the top off and just cut the bottom out and we use that as a chimney or an afterburner so we'll go down the fire pit and maestro cement and see what happens this from a previous one and as you can see the bottom has been burned out but that then is gonna make a lovely afterburner on the bottom I'm just putting a lot of shredded paper and then I'll stack the blue gum on top of that this is the stuff I'm gonna be burning a lot of today which have been down for a long time but we split it into smaller bits hopefully a lot of the moisture won't be there anymore and this is a pile of new blue gum that we just answered me my grandson died yesterday but it's still pretty wet you put your hand on it you can feel the coolness of the moisture so that's gonna sit out here for a little bit and then we'll take the block splitter and split it up into smaller chunks like we did over there and just let a lot of that moisture out of it so let's go unload some of this stuff put in the drama I took and we're working my squats to talk about cranky grind I get much crankier than that as you can see there how I'm filling it I'm going around the outside of the drum and leaving an empty pocket at the bottom where the paper is so the flames will come up and hopefully ignite the rest of it did I wake you Bob you don't like you you don't like you on this stuff do you okay so that's nearly as long as I have a long set fires over there and then when it's taking the hole I'll put more in but you'll notice I've got this gap down here with all that paper at the bottom so the fire can come up let's put a match to it you can hear it popping away I filled it up it's all the way in there get rid of that smoke will put the afterburner on all I use is a couple of metal rods that's drum that doesn't have a top on the bottom and shortly that smoke will disappear for a couple of hours now what I'm gonna do is take off the afterburner and seal it up and the lid I'm not gonna put the camera in there see but that pile timber has really gone down you'll notice soon as I do that the flames started coming out of the bottom so what I'm going to do now is block those holes up with the sand no air can get in there these holes that there was not burnt or flames coming out leave that vacant leave it open and the oxygen will draw and through that hole eventually orange coming here and then when you do it's just a question of locking that vent I put to us keep it nice and tight thumbs is gonna leave that the way it is there tomorrow morning no air can get in so it's going to be drawing everything out of that timber and when it's finished there'll be no oxygen left and I'll just have pure carbon which is charcoal so tomorrow morning we keep the top off and we'll see how well we did it's hard work but well worth it in the end is the color of the Tim changes is any paint on it the heats gonna just tear that off [Applause] mobsters going for a walker in the yard to see what I've missed yeah okay it's the next day and it rained overnight so I don't know if it inhibited the burn but we'll see what the charcoal looks like on what we've got inside when you get down to this this is what you really want this stuff here that hasn't gone all the way through what I'll do or use this for the next burn and it'll help get the fire started because there's a lot of charcoal in there since hasn't gone all the way through that's the later stuff I put on that stuff down the bottom here that is really nice now what we'll do we grab some of this take it up and we'll put on the fortune [Music]

Channel: Woodworking Masterclass

Views: 381,626

Keywords: Making Charcoal from Scratch, charcoal, diy, fire, making charcoal, how to, biochar, retort, make, how to make charcoal, coal, homemade, survival, wood, charcoal kiln, diy charcoal, furnace, carbon, activated charcoal, soap, soapmaking, make soap, history, burn, activate, charcoal retort, homemade charcoal, blacksmith, char, iron, forge, metallurgy, hobby, project, bbq, grant thompson, black powder, king of random, the king of random, experiment, craft, metal, recycle, welding, charcoal forge, hibachi food

Id: 3w5c-U_gUJw

Length: 9min 1sec (541 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 25 2019