Posted on 09/19/2008 9:11:12 AM PDT by awildanimal
Generally, I don't. However, charcoal is the result of incomplete combustion of wood or organic products.
A rather harrowing description of the process was made by Eric Sloane, who casually mentioned that a careless charcoal tender could fall into his makeshift oven and be completely consumed in minutes.
Those were crude affairs, with the wood dragged up into a pile and covered with dirt. A blaze was set, and the tender watched over it as if baking a cake for a week, adding more oxygen here, and covering the holes there, to assure proper cooking.
Hopefully, at the end of the process, a more or less pure carbon residue, with all the combustible gases and water driven off, would then be available to make iron with in the blacksmith's iron furnace.
It was an eminently wasteful procedure, of materials, labor, lungs and sometimes lives.
The amount of charcoal used to smelt iron was staggering, but the amount of wood used to make the charcoal was almost beyond comprehension. In 1840 the small town of Salisbury, Connecticut was using five thousand cords of wood a year in the manufacture of iron. This amount is hardly more than a mathematical figure, but if you visualize it in the form of one pile of wood in cord-width, (4' x 4'), such a woodpile would be over seven miles long. This, multiplied by the hundreds of iron-producing towns of that time, made a pitiful gap in the forests of America and cleared the farmer's countryside of every available tree. -- ("Eric Sloane's America")
Hi, T-C!
Do you grow winter vegetables?
Ask Henry Ford. He "invented" Kingsford charcoal as a by-product from the Ford assembly line.
Nope. We have some summer vegetables that haven’t quite given up, though.
I didn't know at the time that I was doing my part to save the planet.
In fact, I thought I was talking about an entirely different place.
LOL!
Golly, Bob, Howdy! I guess you know I’m not just another pretty ‘Face!
And you did your part so WELL!
(Not to mention revealing others’ parts that weren’t too bad...)
What’s happenin’ in da Souf?
How are all the Chickets today?
Have Mom and Dad gone back to FLA?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted by the poster are those of the individual poster and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the poster or its management.
If you post a bogus post will anyone read it?
If the bogus post is accurate in its lies, is it still bogus?
If accuracy leads you to posting bogusities, are they still bogus?
If they ARE bogus, who can tell?
Oh, yes. My parents were here only last weekend.
Today we went to Waxhaw, a bit to the south, to a festival. It was kind of drizzly, but we had a nice time for a couple of hours, and we bought some cheap sweet potatoes on the way home. Tomorrow I’ll peel them and cook them so they can be frozen.
Mmmmm...sweet potato traitor taters? It’s a good thing I don’t find the “french fried” sweet potatoes too often...they are almost as good as chocolate. ALMOST!
We make baked sweet potato “fries” sometimes. Excellent with ketchup.
Excellent any way they are served!
pesky 0-bot
One of the staples of life. They’re .99 a pound at the grocery store right now, but we got a big bag for $5.00 in someone’s driveway on the way back from Waxhaw.
Conservatives are rich? Since when? NJ and CT are the two richest states in the US. They are also among the most liberal states. Lower Manhattan is very rich. It is also very liberal. The same is true for Silicon Valley, Hollywood, etc. Awildanimal, I know that you are a semi-literate imbecile. However, please update your stereotypes once in a while. We are also not anti-minority, anit-woman, or nazis. The nazis would be the liberals who support judges making decisions instead of the people. It wasn’t the republican candidate who spoke in a stadium before thousands of adoring followers. I’m surprised it wasn’t by torchlight.
awildanimal is long gone now. Welcome to this month’s home of the Undead Thread.
How are you feeling, now?
Hello!
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