charcoal-msg - 1/12/08 Use and making of charcoal in period. NOTE: See also the files: blacksmithing-msg, mining-msg, salt-msg, bladesmithing-msg, metals-msg, tools-msg, glasswork-msg. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday. This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter. The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors. Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s). Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous Stefan at florilegium.org ************************************************************************ From: william thomas powers Subject: charcoal To: markh at khyber (Mark Harris) Date: Sun, 14 Nov 1993 13:27:58 -0500 (EST) Some of the uses of charcoal that would not be thought of today are: Polishing metals with powdered charcoal, (non-ferreous ones) Polishing your teeth with powered charcoal medicine for a "sour stomach", bad breath, gas meat was packed in it charcoal could be added to stale water to purify it wrought iron can be made into blister steel by heating it in a closed container full of charcoal, (red hot for a considerable time) some of the chinese barrows had massive layers of charcoal to help protect the inner tomb BTW sifted wood ashes mixed with a little water and used on a wool cloth pad makes a GREAT polishing compound for bone, Theophilus was right-- but he forgot to mention the water... The faster you can "buff" it the better. "shoeshing it with a long narrow strip of wool works well. Wilelm the smith Barony of the Middle Marches Middle Kingdom Newsgroups: rec.org.sca From: tip at ai.chem.ohiou.edu (Tom Perigrin) Subject: Re: Charcoal Burners Organization: Ohio University Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 18:42:08 GMT royleblanc at aol.com (RoyLeBlanc) wrote: > I am doing some research on colliers or charcoal makers. I've located a > copy of Foxfire 5 and most of the descriptions are handed down, rather > than first hand experience. > > I understand that charcoal burning is still practiced by the liquor > industries and intend to check with a couple of distilleries. I suspect that the distilleries may use retort charcoal, where the wood is loaded into a large steel vessel which then heated. This gives the highest quality of charcoal, at a higher cost. What you want is mound charcoal, which is made by carefully stacking wood in a specific pattern, overlaying it with dirt and sod, and then setting fire to it, and finally blocking the ingress of air after a suitable period of time. > Does anyone know of other places, preferable in the Southern US where this > may still be practiced. I know charcoal burning in mounds is still practiced in Northern Mexico, and in Japan. Amoung other things, the Japanese use charcoal in "Hanabi" (Fireworks). Takeo Shimizu, one of Japans foremost fireworks experts, as written a first hand description of the process in his book "Fireworks, the Art, Science and Technique" (Pyrotechnia Press). > -Roy LeBlanc Tom From: rhayes at powerup.com.au (Robin Hayes) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Charcoal Burners Date: 9 Jan 1997 00:24:53 GMT GMT, Irene Davis of idavis at ix.netcom.co says... >(RoyLeBlanc) writes: >> >>I am doing some research on colliers or charcoal makers. I've located a >>copy of Foxfire 5 and most of the descriptions are handed down, rather >>than first hand experience. Charcoal is made locally (in Brisbane) by a practising blacksmith, who uses a large steel tank, but I do have reference material on old age processes. Some useful books from my library. These books contain many illustrations, including photographs of actual practices, with often considerable detail on the actual processes. Many of these are not only useful reference books but absolutely beautiful "coffe table" books as well. Most probably out of print, but there are ways to obtain them. Simply browsing them can make you a "general expert"... ;-) ~~~~ The Forgotten Arts - John Seymour Angus & Robertson 1984 ISBN 0 207 15007 9 Sections include Woodland, building, field, workshop, textiles, homecrafts Charcoal burning p 36 Still practiced in Portugal at time of writing Author also wrote The complete book of self sufficency, The self sufficient gardener charcoal burning on p36 He also wrote Forgotten Household Crafts smae pub -1897 ISBN 0 207 15608 sections include kitchen, diary, laundry, home (gathering and making fuels - heating [charcoal]), textile, decorative, ~~~~~ Traditional crafts in Britan A Readers Digest Publication (Bl**dy hell!!!) 1982 no ISBN available 2 sections (1) Craftsmans' Art over 200 pages of various crafts including Charcoal Burner p 46 detailed instructions on size of clamp (7 tons -> 1 ton charcoal, 7 dyas work, clamp 15'x6' yields 2 sacks of charcoal netting 4 pounds at turn of century - details on usage of coppiced oak, tanning, bobbin and cotton reels and charcoaling, etc) (2) Craftsmen at work 80 pages of british craft and folk museum addresses.... :-O ~~~~~ While on the subject of "field" crafts Also worth a look Traditional British Crafts ISBN 0 86283 7537 p 235 contains a medieval manuscript illustration of a medieval smithy at work, including the forge and anvil and bellows... :-) Bodleian library, Oxford, MS Bodley 264 f.84 235 Courtesy of Serendpoity (fuuny what you find when looking for something else) Crafts of land, river, and sea ~~~~~ And don't forget the traditional dish of charcoal burners which has given its name to a variety of pasta... :-) Robin -- pereant omnes ignavi seque stuprent rhayes at powerup.com.au http://www.powerup.com.au/~rhayes/ The Virtual Fooles Troupe: http://www.powerup.com.au/~rhayes/vfoolshm.htm From: powers at colon.cis.ohio-state.edu (william thomas powers) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Charcoal Burners Date: 9 Jan 1997 22:03:36 -0500 Organization: The Ohio State University, Department of Computer and Information Science in haste; "A Reverance for Wood" Eric Sloane, discusses american colonial charcoal burning a bit. "Wrought Iron and Its Decorative Use" Maxwell Ayrton and Arnold Silcock mentions several references to medieval forges and rights of fueling in the chapters: Introductory and 14th -16th centuries. The Lindsay catalog has two books on making charcoal (Lindsay Publications Inc PO Box 538, Bradley IL 60915-0538 phone 815-935-5353 Divers Arts and De Re Metallica frequently refer to charcoal "Cathedral Forge and Waterwheel" Frances & Joseph Gies mentions its use and that of "sea-coal" as well I've made the stuff back when I couldn't get good smithing coal.... wilelm the smith (BTW the Nature artical on the Sri Lankan monsoon driven smelter mentions identifing species used for early period iron smelting charcoal in that locality... From: rhayes at powerup.com.au (Robin Hayes) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Charcoal Burners Date: 10 Jan 1997 07:25:04 GMT Jan 1997 00:37:22 -0600, Mark S. Harris of markh at risc.sps.mot.com says... >One book I thought had some info in it, but in skimming it I cannot >find it is "Medieval Technology & Social Change" by Lynn White. There >are other similar books detailing mechanical and technical changes >and processes that you might want to look at, too. I suggest, especially for a good historical grasp, not only of steel, but of metals and technology, especially for SCA period and earlier, that you seek out Robert Raymond's Out of the Fiery Furnace The impact of Metals on the History of Mankind (Pub) MacMillian Australia 1984 ISBN 0 333 38024 X. It talks about the charcoal/coal situation, P16, and other references. The theory for iron smelting is that the following path over history occurred... basket weaving -> pottery -> fired pottery -> copper ..... -> iron.. etc Robin From: rhayes at powerup.com.au (Robin Hayes) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Charcoal Burners Date: 10 Jan 1997 07:29:03 GMT Tom Perigrin of tip* at ai.chem.ohiou.edu says... >What you want is mound charcoal, which is made by carefully stacking wood >in a specific pattern, overlaying it with dirt and sod, and then setting >fire to it, and finally blocking the ingress of air after a suitable period >of time. The whole point, is not that it burns as one may think of a normal fire, but just basically smoulders, the heat and lack of oxygen driving off all the orgainic products, reducing the material to just mostly carbon (with some inorganic salts). Robin Newsgroups: rec.org.sca From: tip* at ai.chem.ohiou.edu (Tom Perigrin) Subject: Re: Charcoal Burners Organization: Ohio University Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 16:55:02 GMT rhayes at powerup.com.au (Robin Hayes) wrote: > In article , of Wed, 8 Jan 1997 > 18:42:08 GMT, Tom Perigrin of tip* at ai.chem.ohiou.edu says... > > >What you want is mound charcoal, which is made by carefully stacking wood > >in a specific pattern, overlaying it with dirt and sod, and then setting > >fire to it, and finally blocking the ingress of air after a suitable > period > >of time. > > The whole point, is not that it burns as one may think of a normal fire, > but just basically smoulders, the heat and lack of oxygen driving > off all the orgainic products, reducing the material to just mostly carbon > (with some inorganic salts). Right... but one has to first heat the wood to the point where the charcoalization will continue in the absense of adequate oxygen. You won't get charcoal if you stack wood in a mound, drop in a match and immediately cut off the air. It has to heat up first. Thus, you begin by allowing to burn normally for a while, and then you cut off the air. According to Shimizu (ref in my last posting) the chemical analysis of japanese paulownia charcoal is typically C21H4O. However, it has also been shown that for making black powder (BP) the charcoal MUST contain organic tars and oils. For example, BP made with charcoal cooked at 650 F will burn at 1.2 sec/10 cm, whereas the otherwise identically processed material made with charcoal cooked to 1200 F burns at 15 sec/10 cm. (K.Kosanke, W.W.B. Symposium, Lake Havasu Az, Feb 14-16 1996). TIP From: timbeck at ix.netcom.com(Tim Beck) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Charcoal Burners Date: 12 Jan 1997 21:14:48 GMT RoyLeBlanc wrote: > Regarding the 'in period' aspects. Would a domesday book be a good > starting point for documenting the craft as a historical practice? Check out *The Pirotechnia of Vannoccio Biringuccio* Dover (of course) has a translated reprinted version that's cheap and provides 16th century step by step of the age old process...It looks a lot the same as the way charcoal burning is done in third-world countries today! Good luck, Timothy From: rhayes at powerup.com.au (Robin Hayes) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Charcoal Burning Date: 20 Jan 1997 05:51:34 GMT Serendipity found the following site describing a modern recreation of the Clamp making process in England in 1992 at a Windermere living history exhibit at Brockhole in Cumbria. http://www.ftech.net/~regia/charcoal.htm quote Footnote: Anglo - Saxon word "col'' often taken to mean "coal'' (ie. mineral coal) actually meant charcoal - cf. "The Wen charm'' - "scring pu alswa col on hearde'' - "may you be consumed as charcoal on the fire''. Mineral coal was called sea - coal, because it was found on beaches (washed up from exposed seams). Only the monks at Margam actually dug for it, from about 1054. unquote Robin From: please.respond.to.the.group at nospam.org (Madog Hir ap Llew) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Charcoal Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 23:05:14 GMT On Sat, 26 Jun 1999 00:53:41 -0700, "JoAnn Abbott" wrote: >I was wondering....... >Why did people use charcoal instead of wood? Does it burn slower? Hotter? >Less ash? And I am refering only to the type of wood made at the charcoal >burners in the forests (an interesting process, btw, explained in one of the >Brother Cadfael books). Not to the coal dug up in pits by my husbands >ancestors. >Anyone have a reason why they would want to burn charcoal rather than wood? Charcoal burns quite a bit hotter than wood, and with less residue. This was useful to smiths (because they needed the hotter temps, especially for iron/steel) and cooks and bakers (because there was less of a "smokey" smell to the food). Madog Hir ap Llew (The newbie SCAdian formerly known as "Ulrich the Ungainly") From: james koch Organization: alchem inc Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Charcoal Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 12:20:14 -0400 Charcoal can also be burned with a draft. When I first started blacksmithing years ago I attempted to supplement my meager supply of coal and coke with a pile of wood I happened to have on hand. I quickly discovered that if you put wood in a forge and blow air through it you will obtain a huge cloud of smoke. The wood will also begin to explode since the water trapped inside rapidly turns to steam. Charcoal works just fine in a forge or furnace. Jim Koch (Gladius The Alchemist) From: david.razler at worldnet.att.net (David M. Razler) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Charcoal Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 23:08:14 GMT "JoAnn Abbott" wrote: | Why did people use charcoal instead of wood? Does it burn slower? Hotter? | Less ash? And I am refering only to the type of wood made at the charcoal | burners in the forests (an interesting process, btw, explained in one of the | Brother Cadfael books). Not to the coal dug up in pits by my husbands | ancestors. | Anyone have a reason why they would want to burn charcoal rather than wood? | | Lady JoAnna | who just read a Swedish fairy tale about a charcoal burner and got to | wondering.... Missing from the other replies (and information that might help explain things if you don't have it): Charcoal is near-pure carbon (the remainder being non-flamable compounds) made by taking wood and heating it with either no or very little oxygen present. (OK, you can make it from bones and just about anything else that contains carbon and stuff that can be driven off by heat, but that doesn't matter here) Anyway, by driving out all the water and reducing some of the organic compounds to carbon and stuff driven off mainly as water vapor, you end up with a fuel containing much more energy per pound, burns with a flame of known temperature (wood fires vary in temperature from spot to spot and moment to moment) and burns cleaner (since, assuming a well-vented fire, almost all the carbon is converted to carbon dioxide0 The cost is higher though, especially through the early 1900s, due to the long, dangerous, labor-intensive process of converting wood to charcoal (op.cit. Eric Sloane). The process has since been automated, but you still pay for the energy needed to run charcoal-making kilns. david/Aleksandr David M. Razler david.razler at worldnet.att.net Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 10:15:27 -0400 From: "Jeff Gedney" Subject: Re: SC - kitchen in a krak Stefan wrote: > My comment was simply to mention that to get coals, at some point, you > have to have flames. That assuming you only had coals is not a complete > solution. You need flames, but... Not necessarily in the same place. A very common occupation throughout period and right up to the beginning of the 20th century is Charcoaler. This is a person who buys or gathers wood, and starts a very controlled burn of it, usually while it is also buried to convert it to charcoal. the charcoal is then sold as heating/cooking/industrial (the preferred fuel for silver/goldsmithing was charcoal) fuel. It was clean burning and unlike mined coal, imparted no sulphurous (connected with evil) odor to the house. The wood was often stacked in a very particular order, to allow just the right amount of air to flow through as it burned, and then the stack was lit in the center, and covered with earth a foot or more deep, with the exception of a smoke smoke vent in the top. In two or three days the fire burns itself out, and the Charcoal is unearthed and brought to the manor, taken to market, and sold. IIRC, one of the Brother Cadfael stories has a body that was found in a Charcoal burning pile, when one of the brothers went to get charcoal from a local charcoaler. The use of charcoal for fuel would have eliminated all sparking, popping and uncontrolled burning, and allowed a shorter chimney stack, just as was posited earlier. brandu From: "Olwen the Odd" To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Charcoal Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 13:44:59 +0000 I get lump hardwood charcoal from the roofing supply company. It comes in 20 pound bags and the price I pay is $9.25 per bag. Olwen >Where do you get chunk charcoal? > >Liadan > > BTW, I've found that for smoking meat, chunk charcoal (rather than > > briquettes) gives a MUCH better flavor. It burns a bit hotter, so you don't > > add as much to start, and you have to add chunks more often, but the > > results are markedly superior. > > > > Sieggy From: "Siegfried Heydrich" To: Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Charcoal Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 11:53:14 -0400 I generally find it at Wal-Mart, the brand is Real Flavor, and it's made by the American Charcoal Co. My last bag was on sale, $5.87 for a 10 lb bag. If you have access to lots of wood and want to do an interesting project, making charcoal isn't that hard, just very time consuming. I wouldn't think you'd want to make too much, but it would sure be an interesting art/sci project or gift for your favorite blacksmith. Here's a link that goes into more detail - http://www.connerprairie.org/fuel.html Sieggy Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2001 08:14:28 -0400 From: johnna holloway To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Charcoal Gardens Illustrated for Feb. 2001 did a major article on traditional charcoal burning. It takes a special kiln and a forest of the right sort of trees. But if you've got cooperative neighbors, a couple hundred acres of woods to deplete, and EPA permission to smoke up the air you too can make charcoal. Large scale charcoal production for smeltering helped to deplete the hardwood forests of Michigan's UP faster than the demand for lumber for housing back in the mid 19th century. Johnna Holloway From: "Hrolf Douglasson" To: Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2001 17:59:01 +0100 Subject: [Sca-cooks] charcoal burn We made charcoal at Fritton Lake (UK) this year. dug a pit put in wood stack tightly with a air gap in center light fire cover with turf so there is only a little smoke escaping leave for 24 hours or so that should produce charcoal. there is a special way of stacking which I will try to post when I get the instructions for my charcoal making friends vara Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 21:50:02 -0400 From: johnna holloway To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: Charcoal The article that I made a reference to in Gardens Illustrated, February 2001 entitled "Burning Issue" describes the work of Chris Jefferson who is attempting to create an "English charcoal renaissance and change the face of the Cumbrian woodland at the same time." He is advocating a system whereby oak, ash, hazel or hornbeam are cut down to a stump and then coppiced to create seperate poles that can be harvested every seven years. The article notes that the Dutton Furnace burned the equivalent of 10 acres of woodland a week at its peak from 1650-1750. Using his modern steel kiln, Jefferson averages a sixth of a tonne of charcoal from one tonne of wood. There is a website given at www.englishcharcoal.co.uk that people may want to check out. Johnna Holloway Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 22:03:24 -0400 From: johnna holloway To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: Charcoal Here's another charcoal site with pictures of what the kiln looks like today... they aren't burning scrapwood either. http://www.coppice.leeds.co.uk/charcoal.htm Johnna Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 11:42:09 -0600 From: Mary Denise Smith To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Charcoal I have to jump in here and call upon my years of experience in 18th/19thC historic interpretation, which included hearth cooking as well as making sure that other cooks on site had adequate wood for their hearths. "Scrap" wood from harvesting trees is almost a non-issue. It is used in the hearth and/or stove. The really small stuff (pencil sized, say) and the leaves and needles had their uses, but not in the fire place. My recollection from the one time I had anything to do with a charcoal burn was that the burn goes much better when the wood is of relatively uniform size. This was a pretty large size, as I recall (sifting back 17 years), say at least 3" in diameter. Also, I seem to recall that uniformity of wood type was important. For definitive information, I refer you to Conner Prairie's web site http://www.connerprairie.org Conner Prairie does a charcoal burn every Fall or so, and thus they have current, practical, first hand experience with making charcoal in the pre-industrial manner. If I were to want to do a charcoal burn, they would be the folks I'd ask. MD/Marged Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 21:42:58 +0200 From: Volker Bach To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Charcoal jenne at fiedlerfamily.net schrieb: > > >Correct. But if I had the hardwood for this, even chunks, it would > > >more likely end up in furniture or boxes or somesuch and not converted > > >to charcoal. I can *buy* the hardwood charcoal for less than I can > > >buy the hardwood. > > Well, presumably charcoal would be made from scraps, either bits > > left over from other projects, or even scrap trees that are too bent/to= o > > slashed/too lightning scarred to be used for furniture. . . > > Um, do you have any documentation for this assertion? Because there's > nothing in any of the mentions I've seen about charcoal burning to > indicate that scrap wood was used. Well, we'd have to have a definition of 'scrap wood' first. I know for a fact that in Early Modern Germany, charcoal burning was carried on in the forest fringes, so there would have been no point in bringing scrap from city or village workshops back out there. It also most likely would have been the size to be more profitably used in kitchen stoves or fireplaces. Modern 'museum' coalburners use wood in lengths of about 1 meter, though I don't think their techniques are documented back much past the 17th century. On the other hand, most Central European coalburners operated on somebody's land, and usually not their own (this may well have been different for example in Russia or Colonial America). The owner of the land would probably have gone in for maximum profit, which, given the prices paid for prime building timber in the 13th century and later (I have no information about earlier prices - anyone?) probably means big trees are right out, too, even if they are crooked - no problem for a good sawyer or carpenter, just awkward for a mechanised sawmill. (There is even a miracle story illustrating the dearth of prime timber, about how churchmen were told that there were no trees of the required size within miles, only to go out into the forest and find five within a day, but I'm not sure I could track this one down, it's a vague memory from happy days in the Berkeley Library). So my guess would be that coalburners would have had access on good quantities of thick branches and flawed trees which would be left behind by timber cutting, and in a 'balanced' forest economy would have used this. This matches well with the size of a coal whateveritscalled on a 15th century illustration for Pliny which looks about 7 feet high and 5-6 wide. There is also a complaint from a 14th century source in North Germany (unfortunately not quoted, just paraphrased, in the Propyl=E4en Technikgeschichte) that coalburners in the Luneburg area cut down valuable trees, indicating that they ought not have - at least in the opinion of the timber users. But I have no proof either :-( Giano From: "Hrolf Douglasson" To: Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 21:08:19 +0100 Subject: [Sca-cooks] charcoal burning charcoal burners live in woodlands and there are documents dating back to doomsday on who has the right to cut wood to burn for charcoal...this would lead me to suspect it wasn't the waste used. However in the siomerset levels they make charcoal from the waste willow that is too small to be used to make the furniture pays your money and takes your choice. charcoal is a good way to use up gash wood but cut wood would have been used for the quatities needed. vara Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 01:18:28 -0500 From: Stefan li Rous To: SCA-Cooks maillist Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Charcoal Alban said: > >Um, do you have any documentation for this assertion? Because there's > >nothing in any of the mentions I've seen about charcoal burning to > >indicate that scrap wood was used. > > No documentation at all; but what else would you do with large scraps? > Either burn them directly, or if they're big enough they'd be used for > charcoal? I had assumed you were talking about modern production of charcoal, Alban when you said this, such as the turning of packing crates into charcoal which someone else mentioned. In period, there simply would not have been enough wood scraps to produce the amount of charcoal needed. They were clearing large swaths of forest to make the charcoal to feed the smelters. I guess they might have gathered some scraps and made charcoal of them, but remember most wood projects that would produce scraps were small job situations. It wasn't like the industrial age where you had centralized factories that would produce great piles of scrap in one area. Period transport was primative. It was costly to haul things any distance by land. Often the transport costs could exceed the value of the item itself. Why go to the expense of gathering scraps and transporting them to an area where you would have enough of the them to be worth turning into charcoal when you've got vast untouched, and frankly feared, tracts of forest. Forests were generally not something to be treasured and saved to the medieval man. -- THLord Stefan li Rous Barony of Bryn Gwlad Kingdom of Ansteorra Mark S. Harris Austin, Texas stefan at texas.net Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 09:33:38 -0400 From: "Jeff Gedney" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Making wood charcoal To: Cooks within the SCA > Has anyone made their own real wood charcoal? > Tips? Suggestions? Warnings? Dire warnings :-) ? Offered for your perusal: http://www.eaglequest.com/~bbq/charcoal/ http://www.workingwoodlands.info/charcoalmhowmade.htm http://www.connerprairie.org/historyonline/fuel.html Capt Elias -Renaissance Geek of the Cyber Seas Edited by Mark S. Harris charcoal-msg Page 14 of 14