What I did for monitoring the end moment was to put a crumpled ball of aluminum foil underneath the retort. Once the burn zone was low enough to pass light through the bottom holes, it would reflect across all sorts of angles. I actually watched mine from within the house in the evening about 20m away. Once red started showing, time to stop the burn. Without this, you may have to bend down and look over and over to see when to stop. If you have access to arborist wood chips, they will work in that design as well. But, you don't want to pack them in with any extra effort. Need air to come from the bottom to reach the burn zone. Too tightly packed and the burn will go out. I envy that you have TIG. So fun!

I'm just jealous of all the material you have sitting around to build stuff with. I either have to scavenge little tiny pieces, or pay top dollar for new stuff. Surprised we didn't see the plasma cutter helping out on this.

Even if you didn't acheive the perfect charcoal maker, you happen to have created a really nice smokeless fire heater which I bet there is a bigger market for! ❤‍🔥❤‍🔥❤‍🔥

Your damper is the most unusual bit of the whole thing. I've never seen one on a Top Lit Up Draft retort . It's hard to imagine most of us backyard bodgers making one well fitted enough to work.

Now that you can produce charcoal, guess what your next project should be?? Now you need to build a gas producer to run a 1940s truck I am involved with, lol.

From the music I thought i was watching a "Lignum" video, new format is good but so is the old, well done

Very pleasant musac with subtle machining soundtrack complimenting it! Nice!

Very nice music for the first few tracks! Pretty video too. Well done.

Great work Stephen looking forward to be one of the first to purchase. Rob

I’m thinking, a char chamber in the center of a rocket stove chimney. Possibly direct the flames to 5 or 6 channels between the char chamber and the chimney walls.

This is a very interesting design that you have come up with, I'm just sorry it hasn't been as successful as you had hoped. I make biochar using a 44 with a 150mm bore casing up the guts as the fire chimney, around 12 x 12mm holes at the base of the chimney to evacuate the wood gasses. In mine, the 44 is sealed and no air can enter the wood chamber, once pyrolysis commences the chimney temp goes will above 700C, glowing white, roars like a jet with a flame extending around a metre above the top of the exhaust flue which is 900 above the barrel. This continues for around an hour and the resulting charcoal is amazing, the wood volume reduced by around one third. As you discussed, the only issue is the wood vinegar which produces the greyish smoke before pyrolysis starts, but I'm not sure one would ever get rid of this as it is not combustible. Currently have some of the kit to build a bigger system that will take around 300 litres of wood, this time a horizontal design, just wish I had your workshop! I'm in SEQ and I recon it would be good to bounce ideas as we're both in Aus. Good luck with your developments, keen to watch the progress.

Awesome project. I have started using biochar in the raised bed garden and some large pots.

I'm green with envy. had this sort of thing on my mind too...

Excellent video!

Great Job! I've also caught the biochar / activated char bug and have been building protos. I'm still playing with various designs, and I like the direction this one is going. I'll be very curious to see your V2 if you get around to it. One small addition you could make to the existing design is double wall the top section and fill with water to tap off some of that waste heat, cycle it to a bigger drum and see how much you can store from a single burn. Anyways... love your work, looking forward to the next instalment!

Man... you realy have a nice playground in downunder! Wish i had the same space and tools... :D Ok... next project: as you clearly can weld stainless steel, build a destill!

I wonder if your the second run , with all hardwood , was actually done pyrolyzing when you shut it down. I think the noticeable difference in weight as compared to the first batch suggests this. That it took longer to cook, and still was maybe not done ,makes sense, wood has BTUs that scale with mass, so hardwood has more BTUs by volume. You could speed the pyrolization by adding a fan, but consider that a long burning clean flame could be used to power an oven, boil water or otherwises harnessed.

I've been wanting to build one of these that powers itself from its own wood gas.

You now have the best water filter media, which will even remove pesticides and other chemicals

Love it. Fathers dad present in bound

Instead of a flap, why didnt you just make a cover for the top of the vent? I made a garden waste burner just like that and most of the time it burns very clean, outer is an lpg gas tank and inner is a fire extinguisher

Reminds me that with all that off gassing, it could be used in a vehicle gasifier that my old dad used to mention they used, way back.

Stephen, where's the link to your shop? Appologies for appearing dumb, but I can't find it.

Connect a 12V LED to that charcoal and see what it does...🙂

Get yourself a shield welded onto your deburring tool ,, one slip and it's a fortnight off work.

How far away are you from making "activated" charcoal?

Enjoyed the video , but for me that piano music was way too much 😝😝

Have to watch this later. Trump was just hit in the ear from gunshot in Butler, PA.

Just KZfaq "CharCoal Charlie"; it produced more quantities with higher quality