Well, being such a nice day, and not so windy today, I went for burn attempt number three.
My mother was also quite interested to see how the setup worked so I showed it to her. I actually modified it slightly today also, in hopes of increasing the initial air intake to assist with a better ignition and burn. What I did was to drill some holes and then cut out a space similarly sized to my exhaust chimney hole, but on the direct opposite side. This, in theory would allow a straight through flow of intake, and output gas flow if the lid was shut. In theory.
So, I lined the bottom with a lot of newspaper and made a tail sticking out that I could light, meaning it would allow me to have a burn from the bottom upwards, instead of attempting to make the burn go from top down like previously, but I also loaded up the top gap with paper also. At this point, I should mention that I have not used any new bamboo, it is the same stuff that has been un-charcoal/ashed from the first two attempts, so for most part, it is already quite dry and some is partially burned.
So, I dug out the hole again, stuck the vessel in, lit it and left the top lid off. The bamboo caught on fire quite well this time, with a good amount of flames kicking in. There smoke was pretty heavy coming out but it did die down a little, so I put the lid on to control the air intake otherwise I would end up with a lot of ash and no charcoal.
Well, I think I controlled the gap better today, and with the extra port hole on the side, the chimney did produce a better plume of white fragrant bamboo smoke (kind of like a new smoked shinai smell lol). Once the smoke lightened up some, I closed it down so only a small stream of smoke was pouring out from the lid, and then filled in the side hole with soil to close the gap. Then I waited some more. Once the chimney smoke lessed further, I then yanked it out, and filled up the hole, closed the lid and buried the whole lot.
I left it to burn out the air inside, and to cool down before I opened it up and emptied it. This time, it was much more successful than both first and second runs combined. I washed it to clear off any ash on it, and then dried it out. Once it was relatively dried, I weighed it and I had about 120g of charcoal this time, with some very large peices compared to the previous attempts. So, at least with this time, the burn was better, and the control was also better for air flow that allowed the bigger peices to be formed.
My father was pretty impressed and said that I could keep burning if I wanted to, and if we had enough, he might even use some haha. Well, next time I have a day off and the weather is fine, I might just do that.
My mother was also quite interested to see how the setup worked so I showed it to her. I actually modified it slightly today also, in hopes of increasing the initial air intake to assist with a better ignition and burn. What I did was to drill some holes and then cut out a space similarly sized to my exhaust chimney hole, but on the direct opposite side. This, in theory would allow a straight through flow of intake, and output gas flow if the lid was shut. In theory.
So, I lined the bottom with a lot of newspaper and made a tail sticking out that I could light, meaning it would allow me to have a burn from the bottom upwards, instead of attempting to make the burn go from top down like previously, but I also loaded up the top gap with paper also. At this point, I should mention that I have not used any new bamboo, it is the same stuff that has been un-charcoal/ashed from the first two attempts, so for most part, it is already quite dry and some is partially burned.
So, I dug out the hole again, stuck the vessel in, lit it and left the top lid off. The bamboo caught on fire quite well this time, with a good amount of flames kicking in. There smoke was pretty heavy coming out but it did die down a little, so I put the lid on to control the air intake otherwise I would end up with a lot of ash and no charcoal.
Well, I think I controlled the gap better today, and with the extra port hole on the side, the chimney did produce a better plume of white fragrant bamboo smoke (kind of like a new smoked shinai smell lol). Once the smoke lightened up some, I closed it down so only a small stream of smoke was pouring out from the lid, and then filled in the side hole with soil to close the gap. Then I waited some more. Once the chimney smoke lessed further, I then yanked it out, and filled up the hole, closed the lid and buried the whole lot.
I left it to burn out the air inside, and to cool down before I opened it up and emptied it. This time, it was much more successful than both first and second runs combined. I washed it to clear off any ash on it, and then dried it out. Once it was relatively dried, I weighed it and I had about 120g of charcoal this time, with some very large peices compared to the previous attempts. So, at least with this time, the burn was better, and the control was also better for air flow that allowed the bigger peices to be formed.
My father was pretty impressed and said that I could keep burning if I wanted to, and if we had enough, he might even use some haha. Well, next time I have a day off and the weather is fine, I might just do that.
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