One of the first jobs when begining to tidy up the fallen oak tree was to take off all the branches. These have been drying out in piles around where the tree fell for over a year now. I think most commercial operations would burn these on site straight away and that would be that. I decided that they would have a use and this week was the time to try and prepare them.
Part of the process when making charcoal with the retort is that you need a feed stock of suitable fuel (wood) to heat the oven up so as to drive off all the water and volatiles and turn the wood in the retort into charcoal. I have previously been using scrap softwood which is fine but needs to be brought onto site which is a bit of a faff and seems odd when the wood is full of well…….wood. So the smaller branches will be turned into firewood and used to fire the retort.
Fine but first of all I need somewhere to store then and keep them dry ready for use. I decided to build a simple frame that would contain the scraps of wood within a netting. My usual choice of wood is to take a few hazel poles but this time I decided to use a small wild cherry tree. These trees will all be taken down this autumn any way as part of the hazel coppice, so taking one out now is sensible and doesn’t sacrifice any other tree.
To make most use of the small diameter stem I set about splitting it into half and then half again where it was thick enough. Not having split cherry before I wasn’t sure how it would behave. Would it split cleanly and along reasonably straight lines? The answer is yes on both counts. Very satisfyingly the wood cleaved straight down the grain and was a lot less effort than I thought. I started with the fro but finished off the split using the two splitting wedges which proved very effective.
These split logs formed the corners and bracing bars for the silo pictured below.
The silo is now full and I have already used some for the most recent firing of the charcoal retort. The oak wood burns readily and performed well. Seems odd to have a bonfire and burn things just to clear them up when you can wait for a while and have the huge amount of energy stored in the smaller branches put to such a practical purpose.
More next time…………………
PS
Before I packed the charcoal retort away last year I ensured that I had prepared the beech logs for the next firing. These have been stood at the side of the retort in plastic boxes and under plastic sheeting over winter. The wood/field mice obviously thought this was a great place to come store and then subsequently eat the hazel nuts that they had gathered. At the bottom of each box were scores of empty hazel nut shells all with neat little teeth marks.
Tim Burr 