Simply cut and split firewood takes up a lot of space, leaves a lot of ash after combustion and does not provide enough heat. If they are turned into charcoal, and then into pressed briquettes, which, in addition to taking up little space, burn well and leave virtually no ash behind.
Will need
Materials:
- dry firewood;
- food starch;
- piece of sheet metal;
- a small piece of reinforcement;
- metal cylinder;
- technical water.
Tools: chain saw, blender, heavy weight or hammer, electronic scales, container for mixing components, box for briquettes, etc.
The process of pressing charcoal briquettes at home
We cut dry wood into small pieces using a chain saw. We collect the sawn wood into a container (bag, bag, sack) and weigh it on an electronic scale, which shows 6.3 kg.
Place the logs mixed with paper in the grill, pour flammable liquid on top and set it on fire. We wait until all the wood has burned out and distribute the charcoal throughout the grill.
Pour water over the top of the coal to prevent smoldering and leave overnight until completely dry. Then we collect it completely in a bag and weigh it. The mass of charcoal was only about 1.25 kg.
Load charcoal into a blender in portions and turn it into powder. Add 0.5 kg of food starch to it and mix both components thoroughly in a container. Then gradually pour 1 liter of water into the resulting homogeneous mixture and mix well.
Using a grinder, we cut out a circle from the remainder of the small sheet metal, process the edges and vertically weld a small piece of reinforcement or rod to its center. This circle must fit freely into a section of round pipe of a given length.
We fill the cylinder with a wet mixture of charcoal powder and food starch. Next, place the cylinder filled with the mixture on a solid and massive support. We place a circle on top of the mixture and hit the end of the reinforcement with a hammer or a massive weight, achieving its compaction.
Then we turn the cylinder over and hit the end of the reinforcement on a hard surface to remove the briquette from the mold. We repeat the briquetting process until the mixture is completely finished.
We place the briquettes at some distance from each other on a base with sides and leave them in the sun until completely dry. After drying, the total weight of the briquettes was 2.2 kg of compressed charcoal.
Let's test the briquettes in action. We put them mixed with kindling back into the grill and set it on fire. After 15 minutes the kindling burns out and the briquettes begin to burn, and it will last 2 hours, after which only a small handful of ash remains.
