Slios Bruguaine

Charcoal Clamps: The Mound Method To read about what charcoal is, see The History of Charcoal . Site prep Charcoal production begins with preparing a burn site. This may be a trench or a pit, but it can also be a cleared above-ground surface at a safe distance from flammable materials. The charcoal burner had to scrape the flat site of all vegetable matter, including surface roots, which could spread the fire from the burn. Later techniques for this included using draft animals and a scraper blade to drag the area clean; in the Appalachian Mountains, colliers chose saddles between ridges and clear-cut, pulled out stumps, then scraped with a road blade to create the round, flat, clear spaces for their charcoal burns (and many of these clearings, with fire-road access, still serve as convenient camping spots today). Details on their method can be found in the Foxfire series, Vol. 5. For the mound method, it was imperative that the burn site be stable and completely level. If the...

What is charcoal? Charcoal is a natural wood derivative left behind after wildfires, structure fires or campfires. Humans learned early on to create charcoal deliberately as a superior fuel source that was concentrated, light, and clean to transport, and that made hotter, smokeless fires. To create charcoal, dry wood has to be slowly carbonized to remove any moisture and many impurities. Hardwood converts more efficiently into charcoal than softwood (the denser, the better) and it must be seasoned (air-dried) for 6+ months in most climates before the charcoal burn, or else the moisture present in the wood will cause wasteful fuel loss during the burn. Ideally, oak wood that was cut in freezing weather (when the sap is underground) and dried until summer would make the best charcoal—although, other dense woods such as holly and birch were also used extensively in Europe, and any organic matter can be converted to charcoal under the right conditions. Making the dry wood into charc...