Charcoal from twigs...simple, quick and effective without smoke

I have not been to this Nevada site, but while hiking back in 1975 I saw similar ones in Arizona. They are near the Gila River and copper basin Railway in southern AZ. The locals called them coke ovens.
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There are some beehive kilns in Death Valley national park which I doubt is very far from the state park and probably the same purpose.
https://www.nps.gov/places/wildrose-charcoal-kilns.htm

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Death Valley, in California, has some also. I think they were used for smelting gold, silver, lead, and other metals most likely, Much of the forests of the eastern USA disappeared for iron production, but I don’t know what methods they used to make charcoal.

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Wildrose Charcoal Kilns
Historical landmark in Inyo County, California

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Not sure on methods to make the charcoal but I do know my mother’s Ormand side of the family was given a land grant from King George II to harvest timber and ore from the land, the tax was 50% of any resource taken from the land. We still have the old furnace! We have a family reunion going back to the 1890s every July on the last Saturday of the month. The furnace was made prior to 1788 and used for a long time until the Bessemer Process made steel cheaper to make than iron.





Not pictured behind the furnace there’s some old earthworks and grading that was done to divert the creek, water powered bellows maybe? One of the products this furnace made was a cast iron hearth for a fireplace.

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With the size of that good looking crew, you guys should have fired it back up!

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Giorgio,
This is a photo of a charcoal kiln near Fayette State Park in the upper peninsula of Michigan, USA. I have been to what is left of the foundry, there are more examples of kilns nearby, making charcoal for the foundry was a local cottage industry.
Link to the park site:
Fayette Historic State Park Detail

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Interesting to me. Obviously the stone and mortar those kilns were made of was able withstand heat and extreme temperature changes for a long time. Wish I knew more about it for making masonry heaters. Obviously U. P. brick wasn’t as good. LOL
Rindert

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i wonder how they have closed the relatively big loading doors?
maybee with everytime renewed stone masonry,
or a metall sheet…thightened with a pile of earth,
or a pile of earth alone ???

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Giorgio they likely used masonry and clay rich mud. At least that’s what I would do, I know bloomery furnaces have sacrificial clay doors when it’s time to take the bloom out.

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Depending on what type of clay or mud you use you can just pulverize it, mix it with water and reuse it. I made a batch box, rocket mass heater using bentonite containing soil from next to my house. Mixed with ordinary sand from the building supply mart it does not shrink when it dries and makes very strong, high temp mortar. That’s as long as it doesn’t get wet, of course. A lot of the bricks I used cracked though. Half tempted to make my own bricks out of the sand-bentonite mix. A total pita, but maybe just what I have to do. Have any of you all done masonry work? I feel like I’m back working on a dairy farm. Of course now I’ve rebuilt this thing four times.
Rindert
DSCN3615

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actually 7 bath tubs coaled…yet some work remains…

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in the backgrond the new coal container…a longer dream comes true, one big container for all the coal instead of here and there a lot of barrels…5000 liters capacity…

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Wow, that is a nice and shiny tank. It will be nice to have all the charcoal in one spot but how do you get it out when you need some?

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in the bottom is a opening with a sliding door…so no more shuffeling out from barrels…
picture from summer when we lifted the container up

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inside in the tank is a sliding sheet , so the coal can be centered over the sliding gate

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Yes, lots of work, like figuring out where you are going to shower tonight. :slight_smile:

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a provisorium is as good as patience reaches…so we modyfird the drum sieve…is very effective now…in the new funnel enters more than a bucket …
sieve cylinder longer and optimal mesh size…
ash collector works nearly automatically

the axle goes through the funnel…



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11 bath tubs actually made, the pile is disappeared…
we tried to cool down with a bit water, how @kristijan and @Chuckw have suggested…
nice geysir effects through the ash…
a question remains: how much water you guys give on the coal?

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Very well put Giorgio.

Always best to modify directly after proof of concept but often the extra work only comes after the patience has gone poof :smile:

I am sick and tired of temporary solutions, we had too many of them over the years but not doing that anymore.

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