Charcoal worker

“ When properly prepared, charcoal exhibits very distinctly the rings of annual growth which may have characterised the wood from which it was formed. It is very light in consequence of its porous nature, and it is wonderfully indestructible.
But its greatest, because it is its most useful property, is undoubtedly the power which it has of absorbing great quantities of gas into itself. It is in fact what may be termed an all-round purifier. It is a deodoriser, a disinfectant, and a decoloriser. It is an absorbent of bad odours, and partially removes the smell from tainted meat. ”

“ The burning of three ounces of charcoal, or of a mould candle of six to the pound, produces the same effect. It is not unusual in a factory to burn ten tons of coal a-day, which spoils 3,185,760 cubic feet of air, a mass of a quarter of a mile square and six feet thick. ”

“ If the heat be carried much beyond this point, the charcoal acquires a brilliant surface, and deteriorates in quality. Chestnut charcoal is preferred by smiths for forging, as it not only burns slowly, but deadens as soon as the blast ceases. Areca-nut charcoal is preferred as a dentifrice; but the willow charcoal or box-wood charcoal is usually substituted for it by shopkeepers.
Ant., &c. Poisoning or suffocation, resulting from respiring the fumes of burning charcoal, has been already alluded to, and the treatment briefly pointed out. See Carbonic anhydride. ”

“ The faggots have now been converted into charcoal. The critical part of the operation, and the one that wants most experience, is to catch the heap when it is "enough"—that is when it is neither overdone nor underdone. After allowing half a day for cooling, the charcoal is taken out, put into sacks, and carted away. Three or four men generally work together and have four heaps in hand at one time. At night, especially when there is much wind, the burners work by shifts. The charcoal when carted away is just half the weight of the wood from which it has been prepared. ”

“ The Charcoal Burners in those stories usually lived in some glade in the middle of the wood, but the Charcoal Burners [296] we are telling about lived on the outside for the reason we have given—but they ought not really to be called 'burners,' because they did not burn anything. Whenever orders came for charcoal they simply took their shovels and went down an aisle into the depth of the inner wood and dug out great hunks of the blackness, which they brought out and stacked upon wagons, and which were conveyed to Vienna and Wiesbaden and Oshkosh and all the other charcoal commercial centers. ”

“ Besides the great use of charcoal in the composition of gunpowder, and to artists and manufacturers of different kinds, it has lately been employed, with considerable success, in correcting the rancid and disagreeable smell of train oil, so as to render it fit to be burned in chamber lamps; and several manufactories of this oil have been established in the neighbourhood of London. Newly-made charcoal, if rolled up in clothes which have contracted a disagreeable odour, will effectually destroy it; and if boiled with meat beginning to putrefy will take away the taint. ”

“ The best charcoal is made when the wood is quite excluded from the air, as in making acetic acid, but where large quantities of charcoal are used for common fuel, as in France, of course this process is too expensive. The usual way is to pile up billets of wood and cover the whole with turf; when fired, the wood consumes gradually and the charcoal is left behind. Charcoal is light and porous, and of a shining black color ”

“ I am sorry for the charwardar, one leg is evidently gone.
Some hundred mules now in the caravanserai, noise of their bells all night long; country fertile, lots of villages all down the valley; we passed several on our left only.
In lighting the kalian or water-pipe, the way of preparing burning charcoal on the road without a fire, and with speed and economy, is ingenious; a light is put to a bit of charcoal, that is placed in a wire basket the size of one’s fist among other pieces of charcoal ”

“ It is less than ten miles from Snoqualmie coking coal,Charcoal cheaply produced. and fifteen miles from the Green River coals. And, what I think is a still better resource for fuel, it is in the midst of the great Snoqualmie forests, where saw-mills will soon be felling the timber, and providing an endless supply of slabs and refuse tree-tops, from which charcoal could be manufactured at very small expense.
It is well known that charcoal is the best of all fuels for making iron, because of its freedom from damaging impurities. ”

“ A fire being lighted underneath, three or four men are incessantly employed in blowing it with bellows. Through the action of the heat the wood becomes charcoal, the iron is melted and absorbs carbon from the charcoal. In this way small pieces of steel were made, but made at a cost which confined the use of the article to small objects, such as watch-springs and cutlery. The plan pursued in Europe and America, until about twenty-five years ago, was similar to this in principle. Our machinery was better, and pure charcoal was placed in the crucible instead of wood ”

“ Wood was formerly known as coal, whilst charred wood received the name of charred-coal, which was soon corrupted into charcoal. The charcoal-burners of years gone by were a far more flourishing community than they are now. When the old baronial halls and country-seats depended on them for the basis of their fuel, and the log was a more frequent occupant of the fire-grate than now, these occupiers of midforest were a people of some importance. ”

“ It is evident that this process is only available when the charcoal used in the fire does not contain any foreign matter which might injure the quality of the iron or steel—for instance, sulphur or phosphorus—and therefore only wood charcoal may be used with impunity, from which it follows that this process can only be carried on where the manufacture of iron can be conducted with this fuel. ”

“ Charcoal is made by burning wood in such a manner that but little air shall be admitted during the operation, that is to say, only sufficient to keep up the combustion of the more easily destroyed parts of the wood, leaving a black residue called charcoal. ”

“ The mixed charcoal and sewage is sufficiently odourless to be stored for some months in a convenient receptacle outside a dwelling-house.
After the seaweed charcoal has become thoroughly impregnated with fæces and urine, the mixture is recarbonised in a retort, and the carbon can be again used; the distilled products (ammoniacal liquor, containing acetate of lime, tar, and gas) are sufficient to pay the cost, and it is said even to yield a profit. ”

“ Stoves for house warming are not used in dwellings in these countries.
In both China and Japan we saw coal dust put into the form and size of medium oranges by mixing it with a thin paste of clay. Charcoal is similarly molded, as seen in Fig. 72, using a byproduct from the manufacture of rice syrup for cementing. In Nanking we watched with much interest the manufacture of charcoal briquets by another method. A Chinese workman was seated upon the earth floor of a shop. By his side was a pile of powdered charcoal, a dish of rice syrup byproduct and a basin of the moistened charcoal powder. ”

“ The manufacture of iron by charcoal is limited, by the growth of the forests, which replace themselves only at distant periods, by the large space they occupy, and the consequent labour of transportation; by the cost of cutting the wood and preparing the coal; and finally, even when the fuel can be obtained in abundance, and at small cost, the burden of the furnace, and the heat obtained in a given space are less than when coke is used, and the quantity of metal yielded [Pg 372] is in consequence comparatively small. ”

“ Some good disinfectant should be used."
"Have we anything which could be used for the purpose?"
"There is nothing better than charcoal. Common wood charcoal has the capacity of purifying and rendering odorless almost all impurities."
"In what way does charcoal do this?"
"When charcoal is crushed up finely its remarkable porosity enables it to absorb an enormous quantity of gases, and when so absorbed it condenses them, in which condition they are harmless, or they are retained in the charcoal." ”

“ This has been the cause of serious accidents at powder-mills, and hence it is important not to pulverize charcoal until it has been exposed to the air for several days. When charcoal has not absorbed moisture, and is mixed with oxidizing substances, it may be inflamed by violent shocks or by friction. This is the principal cause of the accidents which occur in the preparation of explosive mixtures which contain charcoal. See Gunpowder.
Chard. A town of England, in Somersetshire. Here the royalists were defeated in the civil wars between Charles I. and the Parliament. ”

“ One solitary instance has been quoted, in which a manufacturer of great intelligence has obtained by the use of charcoal, from a very pure ore, a union of both these valuable properties, and another, in which iron as soft as that made with coke, has been produced by means of charcoal. ”

“ Much of the charcoal prepared hereabouts is used in smelting at the Backbarrow and other neighbouring ironworks. Iron so smelted is of much higher commercial value than that obtained by the ordinary processes. Charcoal burning, consequently, is likely to continue a lucrative employment for many years to come, especially as coppice woods—the raw material—thrive so abundantly in the district. ”

“ These, as well as aluminium cooking pots and pressure cookers that also use much less fuel, should be made more widely available in urban areas. 69. Charcoal is a more convenient, cleaner fuel than wood, and its smoke causes less eye irritation and respiratory trouble than wood smoke. ”

“ Much charcoal burning is done in the winter, and a pleasant scene it is to find on a snow-clad day lines of smoke rising from the barrenness where once was woodland, men moving round the conical patches from which internal heat has melted the white covering, the rough huts, the incipient flicker which has to be immediately quenched else the whole oven of charcoal be spoiled, the thinning smoke which threatens a dead fire there, to which the woodmen hasten to encourage the hidden blaze. ”

“ The charcoal should be perfectly pure and in a finely divided state, for if adulterated with any gritty matter (and sometimes such is the case) a very indifferent working material is produced, the evil results of which show themselves in every stage of manufacture. ”

“ When charcoal burns, it combines with part of the air, and is converted into a gas called carbonic acid, which, although invisible, is much heavier than air, and is a deadly poison; it is therefore necessary, where charcoal is burning, to always have some opening at the bottom of the room. Many fatal accidents have arisen from people sleeping in a small room with a pot of burning charcoal, and no outlet for the poisonous vapour but the chimney, up which it will not pass on account of its weight. ”

“ The charcoal is peddled through the streets and sold in tiny quantities at each door. The people are too poor to buy much at a time and are very careful in its use. It is burned in a metal or earthen dish called a brazier, and a double handful may last a family a whole day. ”

“ The Government manufactured charcoal on a large scale in fireproof brick kilns, that turned out ten thousand bushels of charcoal to the kiln, with elevated railroad tracks running between the rows of kilns, so that the wood was unloaded from the cars into the kilns and on the outside of the kilns were sunken railroad tracks so that the charcoal when drawn from the kilns could be loaded into the cars with the least, amount of labor, enabling the Government to sell charcoal in one-hundred-pound sacks at one dollar for two hundred pounds, or at the rate of ten dollars a ton. ”

“ Since the beginnings of iron manufacture, charcoal has been a favorite fuel. Though during the past two centuries coke has grown to be the standard, with anthracite and some few bituminous coals finding use in certain favored localities, charcoal may be considered the fuel which developed the iron industry, at least until recent years. ”

“ But different kinds of charcoal are used for different purposes: for some uses men require it to be soft; thus in iron-mines they use that which is made of sweet chestnut when the iron has been already smelted, and in silver-mines they use charcoal of pine-wood: and these kinds are also used by the crafts. ”

“ Finally, the iron, now covered with a thin layer of steel, is hardened by quenching it in water. In default of prussiate of potash, animal or even vegetable charcoal may be used, but the latter is a very imperfect substitute. To make animal charcoal, take a scrap of leather, hide, hoof, horn, flesh, blood--anything, in fact, that has animal matter in it; dry it into hard chips like charcoal, before a fire, and powder it. Put the iron that is to be case-hardened, with some of this charcoal round it, into the midst of a lump of loam. ”

“ The quantity of charcoal required is so considerable that the furnace cannot be kept in blow or working more than nine months successively, the wheels which work the bellows and hammers being turned by a powerful stream of water. ”

“ Williams makes his factitious coal by incorporating with pitch or rosin, melted in a cauldron, as much of the above charcoal, ground to powder, as will form a doughy mass, which is moulded into bricks in its hot and plastic state. From the experiments of M. Le Sage, detailed in the 5th volume of “The Repertory of Arts,” charred ordinary turf seems to be capable of producing a far more intense heat than common charcoal. It has been found preferable to all other fuel for case-hardening iron, tempering steel, forging horseshoes, and welding gun-barrels. ”