A retort for making charcoal

Supplies

5 gallon Metal Paint Bucket (including Lid and locking ring) You may be able to find it at Big Box store or a Paint Store.

Metal Pipe, long enough to extend by a couple of inches through top and bottom of bucket

Step 1: Gather and Prepare Wood

Get some wood that you want to turn into lump charcoal. Here in the Pacific Northwest we have alder. But hardwoods are great for this, Oak, Maple, Hickory. Don't use resinous woods, like pine, if you are going to use the wood for cooking.

Cut the wood into chunks, load tightly into retort chamber.

Step 2: Build Retort

Maybe this should have been first...

What you are doing is creating a chamber that lacks oxygen (as best you can) so that you burn the water and other things in the wood but leave the carbon.

I used a 5 Gal metal paint bucket and a steel pipe (as mentioned before you need the metal lid and locking ring for the bucket.

I think you can see in the picture where the pipe passes through the bucket I saw someone else when they were building their retort drilled a small hole in the top and bottom then used snips to cut strips out the the diameter of the pipe to create a tight fit around the pipe, you could even clamp this with a hose clamp to keep the oxygen out.

The pipe needs to extend out of the top and bottom a few inches. Also the base of the pipe needs holes drilled in it so that there are holes in the pipe at the bottom of the chamber. I also drilled a hole in the pipe and put a piece of round steel through it so that the would secure it to the bottom of the bucket.

Step 3: Load and Fire Your Retort

Cut the wood into chunks. Put the wood in the the chamber as tightly as possible. you could vibrate it so that it packs it in there.

Fill you fire pit (or wherever you are going to do the burning) with some kindling. Raise the bottom of the bucket up so that there is clearance around the base of the pipe. In the picture I put another piece of pipe on the top to enhance the chimney effect, you don't need to do that...

There will be smoke coming out of the pipe for a while. When you are close to being done there will be a flame jet coming out of the pipe, indicating that you have removed the water and other items in the wood and just the carbon remains.

This was my first try and I didn't get the wood completely converted to charcoal in all of the pieces - I still had fun and it makes darn good hardwood lump charcoal.