In my mind part of it comes down to the fact that most people with some level of skills could actually build a charcoal unit that could be made without welding ability and still function. That is not true of most wood fueled units and definitely not a WK. If you did the kind of work Wayne does with his trucks and the size of that engine then that is the gasifier your should have. If you were to plan cross country travel like Jacob then that is the gasifier to have even though Jacob could not have made that trip gleaning fuel off the side of the road even if he were trailering Marcusās chunker. The average person with maybe a forty mile commute could operate on charcoal. The average person also doesnāt have an endless source of wood to turn into fuel. I donāt think we are in dispute here. I love wood. Maybe not smart enough to be able to use it.
Not true TomH.
You wood heat your place quite sophisticated with your own self-made system.
You do know how to use wood. And use it well.
Electrical generation and Drive-On-Wood half the battle is settling for what you can get versus heart-breaking trying to make it just as performing as pump spec gasoline and diesel. Or spec supplied propane. Or cleaned up spec supplied natural gas.
Regards
Steve Unruh
What started my thoughts about doing some charcoal gasification was maybe that i could make good fuel out off sticks, twigs, and scrapwood, not good enough for chunking, and because iād already made a retort for making charcoal for my amateur/hobby forging, (coke or coal are very expensive in Sweden) another reason was curiousity ofcourse.
Another thing, as Steve U, said about city/local driving, during ww2, there was registers about vehicles, in the last years there was no tractors using charcoal gasifiers (farm tractors, road department tractors there was some using charcoal) this was probably due to availability of woodfuel, anyway, we have ofcourse learned alot about smaller scale charcoal making today.
Okay this is great discussions going on herea lot on charcoal gasification.
Here is what I like about wood gasification. If you have a wood chunker built it this.
1: You have your WK Gasifier, Imbert style, or other other style built.
2: You chunk and dry the wood. Bag it.
3: Put the wood in the hopper after lighting up and drive down the
road. A lot simpler then making charcoal by far. I have done both
and it is simplerā¦
4: There is more maintenance involved yes.
So if you can build a wood gasifer and a chunker. And your vehicle can handle the weight of a wood gasifer it then wood is the way to go. It is a lot easier finding free wood on the road a way from your place then it is to find charcoal.
I have both and I am planning on doing something to get to the 75 miles before stopping and refilling the hopper. Just a little spoiler in the near future coming up. My knee is finally healed up. The sun is shining again with temperatures in the 50ās and 60ās Ā°f again in East Wenatchee.
Bob
Wow, Bob, You have sparked quite a discussionāover 100 posts in two days and everyone is providing good input. Tom Holton pretty much stated my positionālimited fabrication skills and urban travel fits charcoal vehicle gasification well. Yet I do like the advantages of using raw wood fuel. If that sawdust filter could really filter out all tar then even the infamous FEMA would work. Recently on DOW I have read enough ātheoryā of good wood gasifier operation to make my head spin. As some have said, without that understanding and experience, any wood gasifier can be a tar producer. That ā75 percentā makes a big difference and personally, Iād rather not live in fear that I might be tarring up an engine which I couldnāt repair. I dream of wood gas, but charcoal gas is for me.
There are many ways to make charcoal. I can literally process wood for the kiln to produce full hopper load in an M-3 gasifier in five minutes. The kiln does all the work there after and its ready to run soon as it cools. If you not tried my method you should. I could never do raw chip fuel processing with a small chipper that fast and there is always drying time involved.
Yes Steve you are so right. I had to invest a lot of monies to build my new firetube, and rebuild my gasifer truck. Yes I bought a truck that needed to be rebuilt. If it was not for my fabrication skills I had learned in my youth, like welding, working metals, and a general knowledge of how build things. It would have even more difficult for me to rebuild the truck and complete. It was because of the great people on this DOW site that It was finish and I am Driving On Wood today. Thank you all. And mean all of you.
I it keep trying to save some of the original 1992 Dakota from the book build but it is slow being replaced as things wear out as the gasifer and components go with Wayneās original build and Chris build go.
Even the old firetube that Wayne built is being resurrected from the junk pile to DOW again in a new WK Gasifier build. But this time it has some modifications to it. Spoiler.
Yes this topic title has sparked a lot of great discussions.
I wanted the new members to see the differences between the two types of Gasification, wood vs. Charcoal. And how to apply it to their needs and what they have to work with where they live and resources they have to build with, tools and skills.
Charcoal gasifer is definitely the easier one to build, and it has limits. Until I hear Goran say that a charcoal unit was built to used up to a 7 liter engine. WHAT, that got my attention baby. I was told that, that can not be done. Humm, well I have found out in my 69 years of life on Godās given earth.
That not things said and establish by man are truth. The YEHOVAH Almighty God and His Word Yeshua has open my eyes. What I thought was impossible is not anymore. Fine tuning the velocities and frequencies of the gases in the firetube restiction open is the big key to fantastic gas making gasification and making the best gases to burn in the engines.
Little things that do not seem to be important are some times the key to great things.
Bob
Did somebody say DualFuel? Lol
Darn right I use charcoal and wood. The wood is too wet here to be used alone (unless you want tar gasā¦which sometimes, I do).
Itās pretty darn wet here year round, I have been running anywhere from 15-25 and a few times 30% moisture content wood and have been able to make clean gas the whole time. Never once have I seen tar except in the hopper gutters and the hopper tank. As @SteveUnruh has said many times the Wayne Keith just takes the trophy for running wet wet wood. I collect a crap ton of condensation and there is much draining and cleaning, and I have yet to play with char gas but once I have 2 woodgas trucks going I think I should have plenty of char to start playing on the dark side. Need to sift a few bags this week from my cleanouts, and have a truck load of cull wood from my lumber pile to chunk up, chunker will get a healthy workout thatās for sure. It should be noteworthy a merit of both wood and char gas is the network we are forming of people for making fuel stations for other Drive on wood and drive on char folks
The easiest charcoal you will ever make comes from your clean out of charcoal and ashes. This is why I do not care if my WK Gasifier is slipping charcoal, it is black gold fuel for my charcoal gasifer. No work making it. I have to clean it out any ways. Just run it through my classifier all the ash and fines are gone ready for the garden or compost pile. And the charcoal ready for the gasifer.
Using the Retort to make charcoal is work, I could be doing driving my truck and make charcoal at the same time.
Having a fire in my big metal fire ring is easy and enjoying freinds and fellowship while the charcoal is being made by the warning of a fire. Dump the coals in a tub of water to put the fire out. Ash settle to the bottom of the tub. Drain the tub charcoal is ready. I now have storing my charcoal wet in plastic barrels with a hole in the bottom to drain out. I have a bung augur to get it back out of the barrel it is now just the right size to use.
Bob
The FEMA (federal Emergency management agency) gasifier was designed around parts that were easily obtainable in an emergency situation from a home or rural home. I believe you, you could build it with no power tools. IE handdrill, hacksaw, etc. In a non-emergency situation, you try to aim the efficiency and output bar a bit higher and the tar bar way lower. 
Going back to your post about my wood heat Mr SteveU. True, there was some trial and error involved, but my statement about not being smart enough to use wood fuel was not really meant to be self-deprecating. I have to wonder how many permutations Wayne went through sorting out what worked and what didnāt before he had a fully functioning system. I read Marcusās tales of his build and the learning curve heās going through, or Jan or JO or many others and I doubt I would have the patience to systematically figure all these thing out despite them all working with tried and true systems. Wood is a whole other level of commitment and I canāt see the average person not giving up after a very few of the issues Marcus has worked through lately. Iām unfortunately one of those people that if at first it donāt succeed, screw it, build something else. Iām sure Iām not the lone ranger. There are a lot of people on this site but not many talking about actually driving on wood.
When I say they could have based the FEMA on this concept, Iām talking about the entire plane of an active zone that having an open air jacket gives, it also would give you a moving active zone as well which was one of FEMAās hopefuls for the design to prevent tar.
The main goal of the FEMA Gasifier was for farmers to power one of their formerly retired small engine tractors, something with a 20 horsepower inline 4 cylinder. They didnāt know how long the OPEC embargo would be and didnāt want farms to stop due to fuel shortages. Luckily guys like Mother Earth News and others kept the better designs in memory so others had better platforms to start from.
good morning Tom
Your statement I believe is exactly correct, in that many people would have given up by this point after working through maybe 10% of the learning curve that I have gone through. Just over a year now I have been part of this community and I have about 5000 miles of wood to wheels power down the road. It is proven that it works, it is proven that wood to wheels is a laborious tinkering mess of black dust and fiddling, and that is exactly why I have tried to document with words picture and video exactly all I have experienced in doing it. Oh if I had tried this when I was 18 and wild, I may have just thrown a match at the truck by now and walked away. Age and kids have taught me more patience then fishing ever did. But if I can document my real world experience for others after me to follow and give them something to fall back on and see the mistakes I have made, it may make there ride just a little easier. The little nuggets of information that can be found here dating back to the starting times of this forum I have so many book marks all over that I refer back to often. Some of users past and not heard from again. Some passed and gone. Information is currency these days, and this place is rich in ways others do not know. Days upon days of reading, now frustratingly without pictures which help me more then words do. Iām trying to get it all in my threads, ease the way for the newcomers. Not pave the way, cause I donāt care for asphalt and concrete, but if I can take a bump and lump wagon ride to say, a gravel road that could use a few passes with the road grader? Why not. There is a reason I have tagged all my videos with the phrase
FREEDOM FUEL
Marcus, you are waxing eloquent in your woodgas journey. Starting to sound like @SteveUnruh. 
Well stated TomH.
" . . . but this above all things; to thine own self be true . . ." Out of on of the 10ās of thousands of books Iāve lifelong read. Pretty sure it was Machiavelli. He was advising no matter what face you presented to the world never, ever lie to the man-in-the-mirror; Yourself.
Learn, know and acknowledge, your read strengths and weaknessās.
Hereās the good news. You can more or less ride on your strengths - that easy. And you can with work, work, shore-up your weakness. Ha! We are plastic moldable. Just make sure it is you doing the molding!
WayneK since Chris Seanz wrote their book has improved modified the WK design step by step in at least three areas. I followed previously to the book release his works that heād occasionally show for about 10 years. You betchaā lot of trial and error. Good ideas tried-lacking set aside. Do realize he started no-jets, no-restriction FEMA. Pre-browning. Pre-cooking. Pre-charring his wood chunks to drive up hundreds of mile to visit Mike LaRosa.
And it is he more than anyone else finally discovered that wood-for-power aināt so much about design absolutes but operational experiences learned and applied flexibly.
What J.O. does. What KristijanL. does. What our in-Thailand friend does. What Joni does.
So you do not have to accept what you currently are, man. You can flex, re-mold, change yourself.
I did.
Had to stop bottling up my anger and pressure built-up, then lashing out.
GrandPa Unruh had to young man, 1930ās US Army switch from boxing, to wrestling to stop from hurting, bad, guys in the ring. GrandPa Pranger did not mirror face himself and story is ended up doing a stint in State prison. He changed too then. Learned. Decades then trying put back together the family he had shattered.
Look up the etymology these names and see a bit my strengths that wanted to dominate me. Broke out a boys tooth at the fourth grade. Broke a fellows nose 7th grade. Then broke a fellows leg footballing 9th grade. Then broke a fellows arm mandatory P.E. wresting in the 10th grade. Anger. Lash outs.
Heading for prison at that rate i was told. And one grandpa showed.
I changed myself.
Wasnāt easy. Was hard, hard, hard.
Ha! You changed and tweaked that home heating system until it worked!
Youāve said if you could do all over, youād . . . .
But you accepted āgood-enough-pigā, moved on to other needful things to become more self-sufficient. The true prize.
And that is maturity.
Maturity far lacking in the brainiacs, who can never stop ābetter ideasā, āimprovingā. And flip over to Using/Doing then operational optimizing half of any problem.
Ha! Ha! And weāall know who these fellows are too. Trapped in their own hells brains-spinningās. Unwilling to mirrors face themselves. Do the really hard workings, settling themselves.
You O.K. TomH. you are O.K.
Regards
Steve Unruh
I take that as a huge compliment Don. You Steve Wayne Joni Kristijan jo Mr Larosa and other og woodgasser have forgotten more then Iāll ever learn. Yearās of figured it out and discovery just in the wood and char gas field. Pioneers. Teachers. All it takes a a listening ear and opening yours eyes, if weening of petroleum products supplied by the big guys and some self reliance is what your after, just get involved. Dive in and start learning, set stuff on fire. Not only is the learning fun at least for me it is, but your end product makes looking the man in the mirror feel good. Donāt need that gas pump, iv got wood to burn and char to make!
Thanks SteveU. I appreciate that. I could relate a somewhat similar tale, having launched out of high school into the world of outlaw bikers and only some years later getting more hippiefied. Truth about sin and redemption is that life is designed as a type of school. If you have honestly learned the error of your ways, then that is repentance and the creator has no need to punish you for your past deeds.
You, Mr Marcus, have done a wonderful service to us all by all your documentation of your build. I learned so much that I may have only half suspected before and as far as appreciation awards go I have to throw one Don Mannes way as well. His was the design I tried to work toward on my first charcoal build. I probably should have went Gilmore first and saved myself some considerable hassle but still I ended up with a fairly large workable unit not to mention modifying his brush charcoal retort.
The OPEC embargo was in 1973, and the paper was released in 1989 based on work, of none other then Tom Reed, if you remember him. by 1989, the 50s 20-40hp tractors were obsolete by then. Even the smaller 10 acre hobby farms were getting 50+hp tractors by the 80s.
Now it may have been an updated version of a previous FEMA or rather a WWII document that was transferred to FEMA. The government required those specs and never bothered to update them. It fits inline with WWII era farm equipment and materials. It may have been withdrawn, because of the āfear of liabilityā which started in the 70s. The specs of the design fit that era equipment and there was rationing of fuel going on due to the war much more so then 70s equipment.
The improvement they made with the stratified downdraft was the carbon monoxide that came out of the hopper when you went to refill it. The sealed airtight gasifiers had that issue, and it could have been a major issue for people.