A Charcoal Experiment
Stage 1: Building and Burying
For my first experiment, I built a miniature kiln about three feet in diameter and two feet high. The first stage was to dig a pit and stack the wood. The stack consisted of a large, central "motty peg" surrounded by smaller pieces of wood.
I then covered the stack with sod and dirt. In hindsight, a layer of leaves to keep dirt from falling between the pieces of the stack would have been helpful.
With the stack covered, I was ready to remove the motty peg,...
...retrieve some coals from a convenient fire,...
...and pour them down the chimney.
With a fire well-started in the stack...
...I could cap the stack and leave it to burn.
Later that evening, someone was outside near the stack and noticed an orange glow. As the burn progressed and the wood shrank, gaps had formed in the stack's covering. A few shovels of earth solved that problem, and we left the stack to continue burning through the night.