The Charcoal Retort by Daniel O'Connor There are two ways to make charcoal direct and indirect.

The direct method involves setting a pile of wood on fire and controling the air intake in order to char the wood and not burn it into ash. Historically, this was done by covering the pile with dirt and sod. Holes were opened and closed during the burn to control air intake. The same can be done in a barrel although I have never tried it. The indirect or retort method involves cooking the wood with a outside energy source to drive off the volatile gases and char the wood. A retort is simply any container that the wood goes in that can withstand the heat and allow the gases to escape. The indirect method usually yields more charcoal for a given amount of wood. Even though an outside energy source (a fire) is needed in the beginning, the process is actually self sustaining after a short time. Plus, it just seemed to me that it would take much less skill and attention to cook the wood rather than burn it. So, I settled on the retort method and it works really well for me. Wood contains volitale gases. That is why you see flames dancing above the logs in a wood fire. It is also why we need to make charcoal to cook steaks and forge steel. These gases make the fire too unpredictable. They also contain lots of useful chemicals. Before oil was discovered, giving rise to petrochemicals, there was the wood chemical industry. They would cook the wood in a retort, collect the gases and distill them into usefull products like turpentine and wood alchohol. Charcoal was a by-product of the process. It also caused the deforestation of a large part of the northeast. We want the charcoal and the gases are a by-product of the process, a very useful product. We want to use the volatile gases to make the process self sustaining. It is simple in concept and execution. Cook the wood in a container untill it starts giving off gas. Route this gas back under the container and ignite them with the fire already burning. Once this happens, the wood gives off enough energy to cook itself. When all the gas is driven off the the fire dies out and charcoal remains. Below should be a picture of my retort. It is made from 55 gallon drums. The drums have removable lids and a bung hole in the bottom that accepts 2"pipe fittings. This bung hole makes life easy. You can cut a hole and weld in pipe if you are so inclined but these drums were $25 each at the local barrel recycler and well worth it. Anyway route the pipe under the barrel. Drill 1/2" holes about every 6" along either

side of the long bottom pipe before you screw it in. Be sure to put an end cap on it. I found all these pipe sections pre-made at my local hardware store. I believe Home Depot carries them also. Make some sort of stand that will take the heat and the drum is done. Again I was lazy and used pre-threaded iron pipe. All this threaded pipe can get expensive. I spent about a $100 on it.

You will want to enclose this thing somehow. I just stacked concrete blocks around it. They crack some under the heat but they are still intact. You can see for a top I used half blocks and threaded 3/4" iron pipe through the holes and hung them from the sides. Keeping the heat in makes this much more efficient.

This is the raw material. It is about enough for one barrel. For a two barrel burn you need about three barrels worth of wood. Two to go in the barrels, one for fuel. I just go by construction sites, tell them what i am doing and aske to pick up their scrap. Nobody has ever said no.

Put the wood in the barrels. Use the short stuff in the barrels and the longer stuff for fuel. Don't pack it too tight. You want the gas to be able to escape.

Close up the lids TIGHT and stack the blocks in the opening.

Build a whopping big fire under the barrels and keep it going good and hot. A single barrel will take about twenty minutes to start making volitale gas, two about 45.

The gasses will start slowly and you will see flames just licking out of the holes drilled in the bottom pipe. In about 5 or 10 minutes it will be like a pressurized gas valve was turned on. Flames will shoot out the holes, hit the side walls travel up and around the barrels and possibly shoot out the top gap accompanied by a loud roaring sound. Hardwood may not be as dramatic but pine really puts on a show.

Once the gases ignite, you don't need to add any more fuel. In fact you probably won't want to go near it. During the first part of the burn there will be a lot of smoke, some of it quite black. Once it really gets going though, there will just be an incredible amount of heat. Let it burn until the fire dies on its own, about 2 hours. This means all the gases have been driven off. It is best to let it cool down overnight. Opening it too soon and allowing air in can ignite the hot charcoal.

This burn went a little different than usual. I usually start a big fire and keep it big until the gas starts flowing. I kind of babied the fire along this time to see if I really needed to use as much fuel. Well after 1 1/2 hours it still hadn't kicked off yet. I had used more fuel than normal and I was about to run out. On top of that a big O' North Texas storm was bearing down on me. I piled every last stick I had on the fire and built it up big. Well, after about ten minutes it kicked off with a vengeance. If you look close at the picture above you can see the pipe on the right. I normally have flame comming out of most all the holes. In this case only about the last three have flame. I guess I kicked it off too hard with the big fire at the end and there was so much pressure that it just bypassed the first bunch of holes. But man was it a show for about an hour. After it slowed down I had flame coming out of most of the holes. Here is how it looks after opening the lids. You can compare the volume to the previous picture. Not to much loss as opposed to the direct method. However we had to burn nearly a full barrel of wood to get this so it would probably all equal out in the end. You can't get something for nothing.

This is a close up of one of the pieces, it is charred all the way through. In fact it is getting close to being too charred. It will burn well but very fast. It was near the front of the barrel where most of the flame was.

Here are some pieces that did not char completly. This a fairly typical amount. They were all near the back of the barrel.

Here is the yield. About 2.5 32 gallon bags. Making charcoal is time consuming. But it is easy and fun. There is something magical about placing one substance into the barrels and removing something else. Kinda makes you feel like the alchemists of old.