Ugh i feel you on that Steve.
I’ve been purging 15 years of " must keep" things myself with the intention of moving next summer. I bought a new piece of property with my partner a little further south with 3 acres of fields, a 2 acre garden clearing and the rest of 24 acres in trees… For a swamp dweller like me its almost too good to be true. Burning a LOT! of paper, busted up furniture, shelves, and a lot of books. I can’t get a bookstore to take them as everyone seems to be purging them at the same time as me.
Cheers, David
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Hey Garry .
I have been out driving a wood burner this morning with windows down part of the time .
The grass is short but green. No signs of drought in the near future .
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I ordered some graphite dry lubricant the other day. Looking at the bottle, it says 99.9% pure carbon. Did i just pay $8.00 for a little bottle pf powdered charcoal?
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Well not really.
Graphite (/ˈɡræfaɪt/), archaically referred to as plumbago, is a crystalline form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a hexagonal structure. It occurs naturally in this form and is the most stable form of carbon under standard conditions. Under high pressures and temperatures it converts to diamond.
Wikipedia › wiki › Graphite
Graphite - Wikipedia
They are both carbon but graphite has a different structure and is harder then charcoal. I suspect charcoal dust wouldn’t hold up well as a lubricant it would be easier to crush.
Remember your wife’s wedding ring is also 99.99% carbon but I don’t think she would accept charcoal as a substitute.
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And then there’s graphene, which has very interesting electrical properties etc, probably a high grade lubricant also given the 2D structure, could be all sorts of interesting applications.
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Actualy charcoal is allso graphite chemicaly but in actual graphite atoms are arranged in layers with weak bonds between that can slide on a nother, thus the lubrication propertys. But charcoal is just a mess of cristals layers growing in all directions.
I just read about graphene the other day, it was developed for research as a lubricant when it was discovered, but prooved completely useless. I belive the litle “ball bearings” on a molecular level were not phisicaly strong enough
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Holly cow!! I just leaned about one of the elements on the periodic chart and now you tell me it isn’t enough to know the valence, and atomic weight; I have to learn the molecular structure of the element. I’m sooo confused. TomC
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Close but not quite.
Charcoal is a amophorous, which a fancy way of saying it is just mostly unstructured carbon -atoms-.
Graphite is a structured lattice of carbon. It is found naturally and it is also made synthetically.
Graphene is a single layer carbon lattice that was recently isolated (10ish years ago) I believe from graphite by taking a pencil eraser to a piece of graphene and pulling off a layer. (they got a nobel prize for using a rubber! (british term for the eraser)) It has all sorts of neat properties, but no one has been able to manufacture it in a cost effective manner or reliably in sheets.
diamond is the perfect crystal structure of carbon.
Since the OP was kind of wondering if they got gipped by buying carbon… You can make synthetic graphite from charcoal and this site basically outlined the history and manufacturing process in the “synthetic graphite part 1”.
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Well Wayne, I am not seeing any green grass or puddles here this morning. 
It was minus 35, (-31F) that’s when you reflect on the quality of your vehicle battery, and whether it has synthetic motor oil… Wear a sweater…
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I don’t think I have ever started a car in that cold condition I can’t even remember if we have ever had that cold.
How do you get the car going? I have seen people build fires under trucks when it been cold out.
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Here vehicles are equipped with electric block heaters, about a 1,000W heater that fits in a “frost plug” into the engine block cooling system. In 4 hours plugged into line power it will have maximum effect. It makes a big difference using synthetic motor oil, almost as much as plugging in. With fuel injected vehicles people tend to get complacent, many don’t plug vehicles in at all, as long as the battery has plenty of power they will start, but this is very hard on the motor.
This morning I had to use a battery booster pack to get the step daughter’s van started, ordinary oil, and hardly any power in the battery, no way it was going to start.
As for fires, that’s dangerous. I have been thinking about a charcoal burner for offgrid situations, or to warm something like a tractor. But best to keep a tractor in a warm shop building.
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You want to be very careful with any heater under a vehicle. My uncle set a skidsteer on fire with one of the jet heater. Luckily we where right there and simply pulling the heater away was enough to let the ice and snow put out the fire.
We seldom get to -30F here maybe about 2 days a winter. Gas motors will always start here cold but diesels if you get down below freezing you are way ahead to plug them in.
I fully agree block heaters and synthetic oil make all the difference in the world. I run synthetic in everything including my old tractors from the 50s and 60s.
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Under -30C I do not do anything special for my car or the 2006 explorer except have a battery in them less then 3 years old. I do run full synthetic in everything as well. Below -30 I have a battery warming pad and the explorer Has a block heater which I have used exactly twice. Cars and trucks are much better at the cold then they used to be.
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-36 c this morning. Of course the perfect morning to play in the snow… crazy kids.! Of course when it’s too hot we all stay in the basement and pant…
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This time of year the ground should be rock solid several feet down, with a couple feet of snow on top.
Wayne and Billy have been sending lots of free heat our way all winter, so mud is what we get.
Buds are bursting and fruit trees are flowering in Stockholm. I’ve never seen anything like it in January. Looks more like May to me 
Btw, a stranger visited today. A woodgasser candidate. We had a lot of fun.
I lit up in less than two minutes, cranked up on yesterday’s woodgas and let the truck purr at an idle while we walked around the truck and discussed gasification.
I’m not sure he was convinced no gasoline was involved when listening to that smooth, rock solid idle 
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We had a very nice visit from Bill and Mary Schiller from Minnesota yesterday . It was the coldest day of the year this far. The weather didn’t seem to bother Bill any at all 
While out riding in the ole work truck Mr. Bill videoed just a little .
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Yea JO; The weather seems to be contrary to what we want. I on the other hand had to shovel snow to get out of my driveway yesterday. My neighbor has a snow blower on his tractor and keeps me cleaned out, but after he cleaned the drive yesterday the wind came up. It drifted my drive way closed again. My wife decided we needed something in town. Know it all Tom figured he could blow through the drifts. WRONG! I ended up getting a shovel and spending an 1 1/2 hours digging just a track for the wheels. I would have traded my driveway full of snow for your muddy driveway. Second thought, shoveling snow is better than digging mud. TomC
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Tom, personally I don’t mind high temps and lack of snow (apart from the muddy terrain). I’m more worried about what will happen to the amount of wood eating bugs and such. Warm winters are known to cause spruce forests to die because of too many bugs and pine forests due to parasite disease.
Also, super early buds and flowers won’t like if we suddenly get a normal -20-30 February and March, which in turn effects other critters.
We’re very dependent on forestry up here. Human individuals are and the nation is. Every dead tree is hundered of dollars lost - unless we DOW a lot
Sorry about the drifting snow.
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Yep. Its my opinion climate always changed a lot in even recent history on its own but in recent years humans are helping the natural cycle a lot.
This sayd, there wasnt much spruce here from what l heared for a long time but it setled well in last few hundred years. Now, its going away again for reasons JO mentioned, but other species thrive. The forest we own was a hayfeald just a good 20 years ago. Now the trees are alredy around 10" or more thick. Mostly maple. When (if) l reach Mr JOs age they will be of exelent firewood/sawmill diameter and if l ever reach Mr Toms age those logs will be worth a fortune.
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JO; I don’t know if cold winters kill of “tree bugs”. Since I have had the farm, we have had one problem after another. The latest attacked our big old oak trees-- one was call oak wilt which I think was a worm that ate the leaves. The other was a root desease that went through the roots and killed the oaks. That is how I got so much dry oak for my truck-- the trees die but keep standing for 5/6 years until the root ball rots down then they fall. We now have some kind of pine bore working across Wisconsin from the west. We loat all of our elm trees to Dutch Elm desease. There are other trees that I remember as a kid; such a sassafras-- we made tea out of their roots and could chew the leaves like gum while walking in the woods.
Logging has always been a big part of the north woods of Wisconsin. Here are a couple of pictures that I may have posted before of down town Crivitz.
TomC
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