Consentrated lye is really bad. I stepped into watered down stuff. The ash that was put in the square frame was dug out of the catch container below the high banker. The ground is dried out around it now so I need to check to make sure the high banker is all right and the lye is not eating away on it as it is sitting there.
It sure does a great job on cleaning the charcoal up to shiny black.
Bob
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You should sign up to be on Jeopardy, Cody. What’s a high banker, Bob?
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It is a devise that is used for the recovery of gold from dirt and rocks with the use of moving water over a hopper box that separates the small debre from larger using a grizzly set of bars. Then running the finds over a sluice box with a mat that catches the gold. So it is like a river sluice box except it is put up on the bank and not in the water. It uses a small water pump to run it.
Bob
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Everything I know about gold mining Bob, I learned from watching Deadwood on HBO, so nothing. I was hitch hiking through Northern California in my youth and a guy picked me up and for some reason wanted to give me a lesson in the area history, so he drove me around showing me these big brass nozzles that I guess were there for show and tell. He explained how they used to run water through wooden sluices of diminishing sizes until they got to these nozzles with enough velocity to blow trees off the sides of the mountain. Pretty interesting engineering.
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Hydralic mining was done here too at a much small scale. Very destructive type of mining. They outlawed it for good reasons.
Bob
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I thought I would put this video here because I did talk about making charcoal out old scap wood with nails in it. That can be bad and ugly. But I know how to make it good or at least better. The best and good charcoal is being made from my hard cherry wood, what nice charcoal it makes.
Bob
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Making charcoal the fun way tonight. We will make more charcoal on Wednesday night.
(HWWMC) Have Wood Will Make Charcoal.
Bob
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impressive , really a charcoal making factory!!
the wet coal, after dripping down in the barrels, must be dried more enlaging in the sun?
or comes directly in your gasifier?
ciao giorgio
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Hi Giorgio, we have around 10% rain fall a year here and over 270 days of sun shine. Drying the charcoal in 55 gallon barrels is no problem with vent holes in the bottom and uncovered on top on sunny days.
I like using my charcoal damp 10 % moisture anyways. I use down draft gasifiers.
The best thing is no charcoal ash or dust to contend with. I do not use my crusher/trommal classifier screen unit at all any more.
I have built my units to handle 1" to 1/8" size mix of charcoal.
Bob
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The Firewood Poem
Beechwood fires are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year,
Chestnut’s only good they say,
If for logs 'tis laid away.
Make a fire of Elder tree,
Death within your house will be;
But ash new or ash old,
Is fit for a queen with crown of gold
Birch and fir logs burn too fast
Blaze up bright and do not last,
it is by the Irish said
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.
Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,
E’en the very flames are cold
But ash green or ash brown
Is fit for a queen with golden crown
Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and makes you choke,
Apple wood will scent your room
Pear wood smells like flowers in bloom
Oaken logs, if dry and old
keep away the winter’s cold
But ash wet or ash dry
a king shall warm his slippers by.
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The fire gathering is over early tonight but there is plenty of charcoal made while enjoy friends we haven’t seen in for months.
A little over a 1/4 of a barrel full. Just need to cool it down with water for the night.
Bob
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Pulling wood out of the two year old cherry wood pile that was piling up. The ground squirrels decided that it would make a wonderful place for a home under the pile. Ugly wood under the dirt they piled on it the bad molded wood will all go to the fire pit once it dry out, it will still make good charcoal. We will have a fire gathering tomorrow night, more charcoal making. The clean dry good wood will go through the chunked for the wood burn truck. No wasted wood. Some of the wood is going to the wood pile for the wood stove for next season.
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Running that ugly wood in your chunker must be a challenge
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Only the more kinda straight ugly ones. The chunker changes there ugliness into beautiful chunked pieces of gasifier fuel. What a transformation.
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Michael, glad to hear from you. We haven’t heard from you in a while.
Did you finish your massive trunks? They seemed even more challanging to me.
Caught any fish in your back yard lately? 
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Well it finally happened with all of the charcoal making from just the fire gatherings. If you going to have a problem it might as well be a good one. Where to store all this extra charcoal after drying it down to about 10 % moisture content.
Charcoal stored in 55 gallon barrels, plastic barrels, garbage can, and of course feed bags. I even have charcoal stored in my car top carrier that will go on top of my 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee.
So the plan is to clear out a area by the charcoal making operation next to the poplar trees and build a cover over the storage area using the poplar trees.
I know it is not on high ground but it does have good drainage from the fire pit area, and the sprinkler system can be redirected away from this area. I will put some pallets down and a couple of Apple bins on top to hold the charcoal in and start filling them up. One Apple bin can probably hold half what I have right now stored up. I will be able to pull up with in a few feet of the storage area to refuel the vehicles when driving on charcoal or wood. The chunker is going to be moved where the wood pile is located right now to make a pull through parking area and wood/charcoal refueling station.
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This will give me some incentive to get my new storage area done. Crooked branches that will not go through the chunker so it is open fire pit charcoal making tonight with friends and family. I love these fire gatherings, I have lost count of how many I have been to. Good times around a campfire.
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It has been awhile writing on this topic.
My wood had a mishap the othe day. We had some very hard rain lately and wind before that and more rain.
I wisha shoulda but didn’t check my wood chunked fence silos.
The wind blew my metal roofing and traps off exsposing my chunked up wood to all the rain we had. Now this wood was bone dry less than 10 moisture content in it. I was planning doing some chunking for my wood stove when I checked on it. It has been dry fore a few days now and partly sunny. Temps. in the 60°f colder at night like 40°f . My wood went from excellent good to bad, and the wood on top is ugly wet.
Got all the wood cover back up and everthing I was going to chunk up in the other pile looks okay for now but even the tarps on that pile was torn up from the high winds. DOW but wet?
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it is probably mostly on the surface if it was dry already. It may not be as bad as you think. take a hatchet and see how far it penetrated.
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Yes, the moisture content is okay in the middle of the pile but the edges are some what wet.
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