garyrapp55 Posted April 24, 2017 Posted April 24, 2017 I haven't made any charcoal in so long I can't remember if I need to let the wood dry out or can it be cooked fresh cut?
chuckufarley Posted April 24, 2017 Posted April 24, 2017 That depends on the method your using to cook it.
lloyd Posted April 24, 2017 Posted April 24, 2017 Gary... right about NOW might be the time to start keeping some written notes! <grin> If you're retort-cooking, it needs to be thoroughly-dried, or else "slow-cooked" at a relatively low temp until it stops steaming, before you raise the temp up to 'charcoal cooking' temperature. Really, it works better in a TLUD if you pre-dry it, too, but you can get away without it. You'll likely end up with some un-burnt bits of it, if you don't pre-dry. Lloyd 1
Sparx88 Posted April 24, 2017 Posted April 24, 2017 Yes dry it first. Cut it up in small pieces your going to use in the retort and dry it. Course you probably already knew that much, was just in case. Also drying in an oven at 185f helps.
MadMat Posted April 24, 2017 Posted April 24, 2017 Here's a little tip; pick up fallen or dead branches (if there are any). Wood that is semi-rotted makes faster BP. By semi-rotted, I mean wood that is still solid but breaks easier and the bark is starting to fall off (a big bonus).
lloyd Posted April 24, 2017 Posted April 24, 2017 Perhaps with other woods, also, but especially with Black Willow, the bark contains a great deal of silica. Removing it before cooking will give you much-superior charcoal. The bark peels off easily when the sticks are still green with sap (and about a day after cutting), and similarly easily when they are slightly decayed -- but not at all easily after an undecayed, barked branch has dried. So, "get it early or get it late". <grin> I cut mine fresh (there's an ENDLESS supply of it here in Florida), so it's no trouble to collect only what I need, and to get the bark off while it's green and damp. Lloyd
OldMarine Posted April 24, 2017 Posted April 24, 2017 Found out weeping willow is no good for charcoal. Peeled a wheelbarrow load and dried it all winter in my shed. It made crappy charcoal but the black willow did wonderful. Bought some red stem willow charcoal from Sparky Myrl and it is excellent.
Mumbles Posted April 24, 2017 Posted April 24, 2017 Strange. The weeping willow I cooked from both my grandparents' and the park near where I used to live performed just fine for me. Maybe not black willow quality, but very good overall. I suspect I used thinner branches so I didn't need to do much if any splitting of my own, but this was over 10 years ago so the memories are getting a little hazy.
OldMarine Posted April 25, 2017 Posted April 25, 2017 I figured it being a willow it would perform like the Black and Red Stem varieties but it performed about like commercial AF in my experience. I used finger sized branches and not the thin almost all bark drooping portions. Didn't seem to be enough actual wood in the skinny parts to mess with. I tried both retorting them and using a TLUD but got the same "Meh" results. I'll eventually get around to writing up a list of woods that don't work not listed by Creagan and post it. I basically try anything at hand around the house and sites I work on and have found quite a few that I thought looked promising but were duds and weren't listed in any of the tests I've read. My latest was Privet. May as well have been Kingsford with cat shit on it.
DesertCatUSN Posted June 23, 2017 Posted June 23, 2017 I know I'll get slammed for this, but what's a TLUD? I couldn't find it in the excellent dictionary of pyro terms available on this site (awesome help). I'd appreciate a description, so I can make my own charcoal. Thanks. Roger
lloyd Posted June 23, 2017 Posted June 23, 2017 "T(op) L(it) U(p)D(raft)" charcoal burner. It uses natural convection to aerate the burning wood, and a controlled-draft to prevent consumption of the resulting charcoal. It's done in a columnar tank (as small as a gallon, mine's 30), and requires no external heating, like the 'retort' method. You light the wood at the TOP of the tank, install the lid and chimney stack, and let it burn until it reaches bottom. Then you just seal it up, and let it cool. It's a very efficient, easy, and quick way to make good pyro charcoal from whatever wood you choose. Lots of guys are using bags of cedar chips from Tractor Supply with excellent success. Lloyd
chuckufarley Posted June 23, 2017 Posted June 23, 2017 Desert, maybe this will help. I couldn't get pictures to upload, but if you'd like some, or have questions just hit me up. http://www.amateurpyro.com/forums/topic/11608-5-gallon-tlud-charcoal-cooker/?fromsearch=1
OldMarine Posted June 24, 2017 Posted June 24, 2017 WPAG had a good PDF on building a 5 gal TLUD but my Data is so slow I can't search for it.
starxplor Posted June 24, 2017 Posted June 24, 2017 I have 3 1gal paint cans that I fill with cedar pet bedding, take out to the yard, run one after the other after the other, and come out with 3 cans of charcoal in under an hour including prep and clean-up. It does require extremely dry wood, where a retort can cook the water out of some not-totally-dry wood, but the ease is so worth it.
usapyro Posted June 26, 2017 Posted June 26, 2017 "T(op) L(it) U(p)D(raft)" charcoal burner. It uses natural convection to aerate the burning wood, and a controlled-draft to prevent consumption of the resulting charcoal. It's done in a columnar tank (as small as a gallon, mine's 30), and requires no external heating, like the 'retort' method. You light the wood at the TOP of the tank, install the lid and chimney stack, and let it burn until it reaches bottom. Then you just seal it up, and let it cool. It's a very efficient, easy, and quick way to make good pyro charcoal from whatever wood you choose. Lots of guys are using bags of cedar chips from Tractor Supply with excellent success. Lloyd Very interesting... I was just thinking about building a square chamber out of cinder block to fit around a 55 Gallon barrel for making charcoal. (Might need to run metal or insulation inside the cinder block to protect it from extreme heat.) How high quality is the TLUD charcoal?
lloyd Posted June 26, 2017 Posted June 26, 2017 (edited) TLUD charcoal is every bit as good as retort charcoal. It takes just a bit of 'learning' to exercise the right amount of inlet air at the bottom. Some folks also restrict the stack, but I've never found the need. Expect to either burn up or undercook at least one batch of each new wood, until you learn the draft requirements. But that's about it. Mine is a 30-gallon 'tall upright' water tank with a 3" exit hole at the top. The exit hole has a 3" i.d. steel pipe about 4" long welded on, so that the exhaust starts a little 'up' in the stack (to improve convection). I topped it off with a 4" x 24" long chimney stack (just cheap 'stove pipe'), and with generous vents about 1/2" high around the bottom of the stack to allow combustion air to enter the stack. (Without the secondary air, you'll get tons of smoke. With it, all the exhaust is consumed in the stack). The vents were nothing more than pieces of 1/2" conduit welded around the outlet pipe, both to 'center' the stack on the outlet, and so the chimney stack can't seat 'flush' on the top of the tank. Also, consuming the exhaust in the stack vastly improves the 'pull' of the draft, allowing you to use a smaller controlled inlet and diffusers, which might restrict the inlet air too much with just a 'natural' draft. My bottom vent is just 2" galvanized pipe with a 'shutter' arrangement I can use to control the inlet air. Above the centered inlet, I made a domed 'diffuser'... just a top off another old tank with lots of holes drilled in it. It has the effect of spreading the inlet air across the whole mass, so that the bottom-most portion doesn't cook only in the center. (hint... do NOT put a lot of holes dead-center... just a few tiny ones. Most of the holes need to be well-distributed across the face of the diffuser.) But all that said, folks make perfectly good ones from 1-gallon paint cans. There's a lot about it on 'another site'... <grin> Lloyd Edited June 26, 2017 by lloyd
Mumbles Posted June 27, 2017 Posted June 27, 2017 Has anyone ever done side by side testing of retort vs. TLUD charcoal? I'd be interested in seeing a comparison. Based on how it's formed, I'd expect TLUD to have a higher ash content, just by virtue of some of the wood being the fuel to carbonize itself.
OldMarine Posted June 27, 2017 Posted June 27, 2017 I'd be willing to bet Boo has experimented with it as well.
Arthur Posted June 27, 2017 Posted June 27, 2017 RGPM Waltham Abbey did ballistic tests and found retort charcoal 30% better than clay heap burned charcoal. Previous mention on here has been that TLUD and retort baked charcoal are equal. One current UK charcoal maker has a large TLUD based system and gives the product a brief milling and then sieves the 600 mesh out and discards it -that's the ash gone away.
dagabu Posted July 5, 2017 Posted July 5, 2017 Found out weeping willow is no good for charcoal. Peeled a wheelbarrow load and dried it all winter in my shed. It made crappy charcoal but the black willow did wonderful. Bought some red stem willow charcoal from Sparky Myrl and it is excellent. Not my experience either. We downed a 40' willow and let it dry in splits for three years, TLUD cooked all of it and it out performs any and all commercial BP and we dont even puck/corn ours. Cedar bedding is even better for breaking small shells with no booster. All TLUD, I gave up on the retort years ago. I would like to see a side by side comparison too though.
OldMarine Posted July 6, 2017 Posted July 6, 2017 I've cooked black willow in my TLUD and it's primo. The weeping willow sucked. If I can't get Bobby's or Sparky's coal I cook ERC. Limited time must be meted and appropriated as it comes.
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