Sunday, March 18, 2007
Making Real Charcoal in the Wood Stove
We just came back from hours of errands and found large amounts of charcoal in the wood stove where there were logs. I'm not sure exactly how this worked and will have to do some experimenting, but we had a fire going earlier today and I wanted some heat running for the family pets. So I dropped an extra log or two onto the burning coals and closed the air vents down to keep the wood from burning through too quickly.
After a quick check on the Internet, here are instructions for making charcoal at home. From what I just read there, the wood stove acts like a natural kiln for creating charcoal (which you could use for cooking or even other purposes like drawing). I must have shut the vents just enough to let the wood smolder without extinguishing the burning process. If I had wanted to use the charcoal, I'd have had to close the vents completely (and notice that the link uses the word damper for what I would call a vent, as the damper for our stove is in the pipe leading to the chimney - not something you'd want to close while something was burning).
After a quick check on the Internet, here are instructions for making charcoal at home. From what I just read there, the wood stove acts like a natural kiln for creating charcoal (which you could use for cooking or even other purposes like drawing). I must have shut the vents just enough to let the wood smolder without extinguishing the burning process. If I had wanted to use the charcoal, I'd have had to close the vents completely (and notice that the link uses the word damper for what I would call a vent, as the damper for our stove is in the pipe leading to the chimney - not something you'd want to close while something was burning).
