Way to go! That’s some fine barbecue grade charcoal, too!
I still need to fix my Hookway sort of retort. I was thinking of using one of my big oil tanks that I’ve already cut into as my burn chamber, since my retort is a 55 gallon drum.
I may even remove the internal chimney and just place some off gas ports on the bottom like you did with that tank. More room for wood.
I think you have a good idea there Cody. I have seen 55 gallon drums in an old oil tank retorts. Nice thing is that the drum is horizontal and easier to load and unload than my vertical design. I would love to make one like that, but good luck trying to find an oil tank in Chile. 
Looking great!
Indeed, a retort produces denser, harder charcoal. Allinall better quality thsin a TLUD.
Does the volume shrink much in a retort or do you get almost as much (volume wise) as you initially put in?
I end up with maybe 1/4 the amount I start with just burning it until it all turns to coals and then shovel them into an air tight barrel to cool which is working OK but the retort method looks like it would work better if the wood was already close to engine grade size. When I tried that with my method I ended up with mostly biochar.
Of course, I mostly start with as long of pieces as I can to avoid so much cutting but getting almost engine grade sized charcoal without all the mess and dust would be nice.
From the pictures you can see that the top of the load went from a couple of inches above the tank top to a few inches below. I stuffed the wood in so that it was quite tight, but after firing it was loose - so the load shrank in both length and width. But nothing like the 1/4 you say you got. Of course you have to account for the wood I used to heat the retort when comparing to your method. It is significant. I do plan on doing a run where I weigh everything and determine the amount of wood used to heat the retort versus that turned to charcoal.
Regarding engine size charcoal - I find it much easier to reduce charcoal to that size rather than wood. That was one of the reasons I built a charcoal gasifier. Even before I built a crusher, I felt it was still easier to manually crush the charcoal rather than cut the wood to size first. Unless you have a supply of already small pieces, I would just use larger pieces of wood. But yes, if you use small pieces of wood, they will shrink just slightly in size going to charcoal.
Thanks Marty.
This is where I got the idea to “not grind” the charcoal.
I don’t want to cut all the pieces and end up with 3/4 of it just burning away. Might not be a big deal if I had a chunker but I might be willing to cut a bucket of small pieces and use other wood to fire the retort.
Another use I could see with the retort would be if making BBQ charcoal using special woods and fire it with other woods. I suppose even making the charcoal from hardwood and firing it with softwood could get better quality engine fuel.
Your charcoal did look a lot nicer than mine does.
Good thing I’m dumb and lazy because you guys make this seem a lot more complicated than how I make it and I may have given up early if I had to work that hard. I did cook up some of the left overs I had from cutting up chunks for Jacob North and I liked it but not nearly enough to do it again.
Tom, I just found one of your videos. I agree that making charcoal doesn’t need to be as complicated as some of us try to make it but that retort charcoal did look nice.
I was trying to find your method of making charcoal. Is the only air inlet through the pipe where you hook your blower? Do you have to run the blower a little bit after each new wood addition to keep it from smoking?
I can’t quite figure out how your grinder works. I’m guessing it forces any bigger chunks against the channel (flat plate) and the half pipe piece ends up very close to the plate as it rotates. What determines the largest size? Hard to tell from the picture on the video but it looks like the half round piece has more than a 1/2 inch gap. *** EDIT - The picture I was looking at wasn’t welded yet ***
My grinder (similar to Gary Gilmore’s) doesn’t take a lot of power and I’ve been running it with a cordless drill but a hand crank like yours has would probably be good enough and not have to worry about how much charge the battery has or if the carbon dust was going to mess up the drill. It’s probably slower than yours but doesn’t take a long time to fill a bucket.
My usual method of making charcoal is somewhat a TLUD but sometimes I add more wood as it burns. Usually this results in smoke at least for a while until it gets burning good again.
I sometimes blow air into it to get it burning better but I have more than one air hole at the base of the water heater tank. Mostly I just let it smoke and it clears back up after a few minutes but less smoke would be better.
The video with the grinder was poorly shot Brian but basically the cylinder just sits inside a J made from a half pipe welded to a plate. The cylinder just has four half inch bars welded to it. At that time I was hoping to make everything as simple as possible to induce some homesteading people I am involved with to try working with wood gas but that never happened. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. I still use the grinder because it does what I need it to without having to make it more elaborate. I don’t really have to worry about smoke and yes my barrel smokes quite a bit at start up and some when loading in new wood. I have since gone to a TLUD and for branches I have found that Chuck Whitlock’s tilted barrel design works fairly smoke free. Because of how I run my wood heater for the house I get quite a bit of char out of that as well during the heating seasons.
Probably the wery best method for making engine grade charcoal on a small scale is the bathtub or tilt barrel method. Light a fire on the bottom and just top up with twigs and branches untill the barrel or bathtub is full. If the twigs are reasonably dry you can fill half a 55gal barrel in a hour of burning. Requires no grinding usualy too, just dust sifting.
Well the gasifier got its maiden voyage completed. We had a wicked storm come through and the power went out. I had the gasifier/generator running for 3+ hours supplying the house with power. I have an air leak somewhere that I have to track down and the generator speed governor is not working correctly, but all in all it was a success. Most importantly, I got the expresso machine working. 
Yes Marty the time you really really need it to work for real is the time you sit back and ponder how worth while all that effort was , and then you start thinking "I cant wait for another blackout " the last time was a week for me and 3 weeks for my neighbor’s power fed from a different sub station the storms causing a real night mare for the area .
Dave
I agree that the tilted barrel or bathtub method is generally the best/simplest method for charcoal production (I have used retorts, kilns, air curtain kilns, TLUDs and other variations). The only simpler method is for those of us who live where commercial tree trimming is widespread (New Hampshire is the most tree covered state in the US). Tree trimming companies have a hard time getting rid of chips. They deliver a truckload to my home whenever I have room for them. I screen chips between 1 inch and 3/8 inch screens and pyrolyze in a giant TLUD with a small blower. Viola, engine grade fuel.
Hi Bruce, with the tilted barrel setup do you get a half of a barrel full of engine grade Charcoal in each batch you burn or maked?
I was thinking on putting this idea over my fire pit. A barrel tilted at 45 ° in the fire pit full of small dried cherry wood sticks and branches. Put a lid on the barrel and start my pit fire for a evening burn cooking what was in side the barrel and making Charcoal on the out side in the fire pit. I know wood that has been retorted with out fire touching the wood is better Charcoal then the fire actually burning it and pyrolysis it down with ashes in it.
I have never tried this fire pit and barrel method before. With the 45 ° tilted barrel. Should be interesting to try out before the snow and cold comes into this area where I live. Being to cold of outside temperatures are counter productive for retorting.
Hi Bob,
I have only used the tilted barrel as a direct burn kiln not as a retort. Yes, at 45* the barrel ends 1/2 full as sticks are added as the flames die down. I once tried a barrel cut at 45* but no better results and MUCH harder to seal off for cooling. If you need to eliminate smoke during startup, add an air manifold blowing across the opening (AKA, curtain kiln). The air flow captures and burns the smoke and speeds up the process. This creates a much hotter fire and required protective clothing and face shield for safe feeding.
If you slowly reduce the tilt of the barrel, until it’s upright, you can nearly fill it with coals. There is some risk of being bored out of your mind by the time you do this. And a risk of singed whiskers and red forehead. A full(er) barrel seems like more than twice the time and work of half a barrel, but it may be a psychological effect. Maybe if you have really long hot dog roasters it would be okay. 
Yes, indeed Bob, charcoal done this way is inferior in quality compared to kiln charcoal. Its much less dense and has way more ash. Bark and twigs have a much higher mineral content thain hearth wood. But it has a lot of up sides too. It is stupid simple and fast! Super low tec. This summer, l run out of charcoal twice on sepparate occasions with my BCS mower, helping a friend with hayharvest. I found a barrel, lit a fire and fed it twigs for half a hour. Doused with water for the steam to push out the air, lid on and after half a hour of cooling it was ready for refueling. No sifting, no grinding, just wetting to optinal mousture content. A nother 5 hours worth of runtime, all in under a hour. In those scenarios, making fuel on the go, charcoal is superior to raw wood.
Bruce, lm so envious. Here woodchips are like gold. Our country too is over 60% wooded but the woodchips get sold to powerplants. Im not sure for now but last year they cost around 30$ a cubic yard.
Perhaps you culd convince those folks to haul some this way… l need mulch for my greenhouse
Yes, I am indeed blessed. All kinds of good uses for these chips.
Have you had a chance to look at my proposed downdrafter design in Brian’s First Downdraft topic? I greatly value your thoughts and opinions.
I have. Truth is, l only tryed the double flute downdraft as a proof of concept on my Škoda and then installed a WK hearth l had from my Mercedes, as was planed. This is about all of my experiance with it. I did build a downdraft with one central nozzle for my tractor and l had a lot of problems with slag creeping in the nozzle. Ended up having to drill it out way bigger thain l thod l shuld, to acomodate for slag buildup. Then it worked fine. Since then l installed Tones test gasifier but will probably install the original back, will show why on my thread.
Cody, Bob, Don and others have way more experiances.
Off the bat, my thinking about your drawing is you shuld certainly try it. At the wery least, for sure its gonna be better thain any updraft. And simpler thain going full air mantel nozzle type gasifier and more effective thain a single down facing nozzle as had l tryed.
I do think it shuld work good on a mobile unite, vibration shuld help with bridging. Only problem, like l sayd, might be slag and overheating the nozzle.
