B(in a)FF:

Sure, will do. I've got a bunch of them up my sleeve and if anybody else has some they'd like to share, please do. One very important one would be the building of ferrocement catchment tanks-- I imagine we may get the opportunity soon.

You got to admit, making char like that is stupid easy.

Depending on how much longer I can stand the stink of myself, a ferro Ufuro Tub may be *very* soon.  Pilau!

I haven't made any charcoal, but a have watched a lot of biochar presentations and it looks like you are making charcoal so fast that it seems almost impossible. What am I missing? Can you explain why what you are doing works like that. It just looks like a fire.

LOL.

Actually, it's a kiln. I'm just building my kiln out of soggy wet wood, 'cause, well, that's what I got. Of course soggy wet wood makes for a poor kiln, and it's only good for about 30 minutes at that temperature, and then it starts to catch fire and collapse into charcoal. So I have to then build another kiln out of soggy wet wood to cover that last kiln which is now burning and collapsing. And of course, soggy wet wood makes a poor kiln, and it's only good for about 30 minutes at those temperatures, and it catches fire and begins to collapse into coals. So, of course, I have to build another kiln out of soggy wet wood. . .

And if you do that all day, you find you'll end up with a lot of charcoal.

I  don't know about the sag card but keep that dog away from the fire and what ever you do don't pull on the tail. You may have biochar all over the place.

My uncle always had us poke his palm with a finger but I guess pulling on the tail might have the same result?  Seems like a bit of methane (aren't farts methane?) near biochar might help the burn along or would that just increase the amount of ash?

Can the biochar technique also be written up as text for those folks who don't have video capability?  There's a lot of folks out there who don't have computers or don't have computers with speakers.  I figure a lot of the gardening and get out there and do things sorts of folks are not all that wired up.

You have to be very careful about the methane near the burn - or you could just end up with a very large ash-hole!
LOL

This quip concerning bio-char and farting, in my estimation, is deserving of a exclamatory and percussive ba-doom-pa! I congratulate mrostron on successfully integrating humor into the too-often-not-funny process of making charcoal. Hopefully such innovative development will throw open the doors to the neglected genre of bio-char humor...

Neglected, abstruse & obscure it may be, but methane world-wide is actually a pretty significant issue (pun intended, of course).  The Big Island, with all its cattle, must be a significant producer.  Of course with the near constant tradewinds I suppose its just farting in the wind - a lost energy source ne'r to be harnessed. 

Indeed.

Mike, I've got a new phone number, I need to send you, the other one went in the fish pond.

OK, so tonight, again after a big burn. I lay this out to Ben and Josiah, or other biochar folk.

Look, this is a technical issue.

Suppose you want to infuse 40000 square feet with char at a 1 pound a square foot loading. This is really the threshold to results.

I understand the barrel bit, Ben, and I also understand that it would take me, fairly, producing 4 cubic feet a day, once a week--assuming I top dress at 3/4 of an inch, which is necessary in the tropics---that's 400 cubic feet a year, roughly, rounding down--which dresses 4000 square feet a year, roughly, at that loading. Which will take me 10 years to treat an acre. This is why I abandoned barrels. It's silly. I've done the same thing. It took me all day to do it an I had the results that would barely dress a row of carrots.

This is why I do what I do. I can process a half a yard a day, easy. It is perhaps not efficient in yield It is very very efficient in resolution..Honestly, since I'm cutting my trees, and they go from dead snag to charcoal in 5 hours. Actually I think this process is supremely efficient. I don't cut a tree unless I have a tree to plant. Which is typically Koa. Which grows faster than anything. Which enjoys being planted in biochar. I have 2 year Koa that must be 15 feet tall now. 2 inches at the butt.

You could buy the stuff from Josiah, at 20 bucks a cubic foot. Which costs, roughly,  2 dollars a square foot, which costs 18 grand an acre. . .3 times what you could purchase the raw land for?  You could purchase a SHIT LOAD of NPK for that kind of money. . .back to real estate--- You can purchase a heavily wooded 3 acre parcel now likely for 20k, with the trees on it? Like 100 tons an acre of some such? Which you could cut and char yourself? Really, how much money in char is that? How does selling char at retail now proximate sustainability? If you think you can sell "sustainability" for 3 or 4 times what slash and burn costs--and rely on free delivered waste of cut timber for your raw materials to deliver a product: you are hallucinating.

Surely it's more ecologically benign to mine NPK rather than trees?

Um, like what are you all thinking, really? I don't mean to bust your ass, I think it's good we have answers. Seriously, I hope you take this as friendly rivalry to make us all do better. Biochar adds up for me, because its cradle to grave on the same site.  Sell my char? HA, you must be kidding. What it seems that others are advocating to me looks like profiteering and, well it doesn't add up--including that which you guys are doing , I  offer that in a friendly manner-- and I say that while agreeing with your values as expressed. Other people may disagree and enjoy that it doesn't seem to add up as a opportunity to discourage a legitimate cause. I think it would be constructive to resolve this very basic issue.

As far as I'm concerned, biochar is a very important opportunity. It should be advocated. Let's be sure we don't market things we should advocate.

Today I'm really gassed, as I cut up a huge Ohia stump and fried it. It was a lot of work. Probably 18 cubic feet in that burn. I  do this once a week. Sometimes twice. This week it was 4 times. I have 1/2 acre in char now. That's more than a row of beans or a row of corn. It's taken a lot of ball busting work to pull that off. Thousands of pounds, if not tens of thousands-- of dead wood lugged out of the jungle. . .

I will say it again.

Biochar is a process, not a product. As a process, taught as a skill to be utilized on site it makes all the sense in the world. As a product, it makes no sense at all, or, generously, practically,  only in the rarest of cases, like rice hulls or some such, but none of us are doing that.

1) If you have a tree to cut and char it, that's great, and makes sense

2) If you have a tree to cut and char it, and you sell it, well, you're an idiot.

3) If you can get other people's trees to cut and char, well, enjoy it while it lasts. That's likely to be profitable in the short term. For myself, I'm going to pay rapt attention to the profitability of enriching my own soil rather than the soil of others.

He who dies with the best dirt wins.

That's proverbial JayQuote as some have said.
 

OK.  So I'm out of the loop.  Is there a biochar video somewhere on this blog?  Where can I find it?

Thanks

Hi Melon.

Look in "instructional videos."

Hi Jay,

You are probably right when thinking about long term sustainability. But don't forget about short term need. A lot of us are in transition. There are a lot of people with smaller lots (smaller than 3 acres). And believe it or not there are places on the east side of the island without a lot of trees. I need to get a garden going and I don't have enough material to make char. I hope to get more land but I need to get going with what I have now. There are a lot of people that would benefit from having a victory garden of sorts and can't afford to buy more land. I'm sure there are more examples. Providing char along with education seems like a pretty good idea to me at least as a transition activity.

Hi Joe,

I agree with you, and I hope I don't come across as busting Ben or Josiah-- because all in all we're all working on the same stuff and pulling in the same direction. I understand transition, as I'm in the same spot. Sure, there is indeed a place for the delivery of char and for some that's the only answer. It's important, I think, to insure that if char is going to be imported from one site to another that we're not just depleting one site to enrich another. That makes very little sense. We're seeing now more focus on ag waste and bone based chars for the basic stock, and that's a great idea. We do, however, need to be very careful of a couple of things. 1) Making sure that the use of char actually happens. This requires less "raising awareness" and more shovel work. 2) Making sure that the advocacy that is offered is practical and scalable-- meaning, the end of the day it's both accessible and cost effective. As far as I can see it, much of what is being offered up doesn't meet that metric. It's not very realistic to expect widespread adoption of a soil treatment that costs a dollar a square foot, or to adopt processes that(barrel retort--I understand, that's where I started out) that you work your ass off all day and at the end have enough material to cover a 6 x 6 patch of soil.

Biochar, however, if thought of as a process that's incorporated into the day to day routine of rural living can, however, make a dent in one's needs. There is a tendency to obscure this because many of the voices representing biochar aren't advocates but rather salespeople, and want you to buy their product. They have a vested interest in keeping the process complicated to insure you remain a profitable customer. So, I guess at the risk of sounding shrill, I feel the need to say "hey, you know, you can do it yourself just fine" to kinda balance the conversation a bit.

At the end of the day most of what we're discussing is really lifestyle rather than anything else.

And also, it really looks to me that planting a few "weed trees" isn't such a bad idea. Farm some char on site right beside the vegetables.  Suddenly all that albezia looks like a hell of an asset.

Hi,

Joined to say thanks for the fresh perspective and the honesty here. Saw the 3 biochar videos and they were a great help. I do intend to give it a try.

Thanks again.

Jay:

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction....I did see the videos, and I really do appreciate the time and effort you took to make the process clear to us.  Now I need to do a lot of re-thinking of how I'm going to fill my need for biochar.

Regarding future videos, was there someone who had a good technique on how to sharpen chain saws?  That might be worth a shoot.

Mel

Hi Mel, thanks for the feedback. The goal here is to encourage implementation and offer immediate solutions.

As for the sharpening video- actually being a kid who grew up in chain saw country I've considered doing just that, so I guess you've inspired me to go ahead with it. As many have no doubt learned this is tough country on a chain saw chain as it's pretty tough to get through an hour of saw work without licking some lava somewhere, and it doesn't take long for the chain to look like hell. "Rip chains" also have various tooth profiles and are useful in awkward cuts in hardwood. The main thing is not to waste any time with a cheap chainsaw. Get a pro quality saw. In this lifestyle it's a tool almost always at hand and you'll just burn up cheap ones, and they won't have half the functionality anyhow.

The MS 260 pro by Stihl is awful hard to beat, and will handle most anything any of us are likely to encounter. The Garden Exchange sells them of course, and does a very good job of stocking parts.