charcoal, urgent

[Dave]

Can anyone tell me where I can get charcoal from tomorrow? Scouts are having a sleep over and barbecue tomorrow night and guess what, they forgot to get the charcoal :-(

Dave

[mark]

your local petrol station?

mark

[David in Normandy]

Seeing as this is a DIY group I think you should post haste cut down a tree, preferably one with some dry / dead branches. Then chop the timber into small pieces. Then dig a deep pit and put the timber in there and set fire to it. Cover with earth and allow it to burn while starved of oxygen. By tomorrow you should have a plentiful supply of charcoal :-)

[Frank Erskine]

On Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:38:28 +0000, Dave had this to say:

Boy Scouts should be quite capable of making a fire without charcoal.

[OG]

Check out your local Aldi - they may be selling off their Charcoal Chimneys at £3 each. For those that don't know them, they are steel cylinders that make lighting charcoal a 1 match jobby.

Fill with charcoal - stuff bottom with 2 crumpled sheets of newspaper. Light newspaper with match. Come back in 10-15 minutes, tip out and start BBQ.

are £15 upwards.

[andrew]

Very dry wood is the nub. Why cover it with earth when you can use it immediately?

1)Take small metal container, 205 litre drum with top cut off is ideal. Light very small fire in bottom, once burning brightly add small twigs to top of fire, being careful to maintain flame, keep building up char bed by this process until full of char. You can do the same in the 205 litre container split longitudinally jut above the centre with no holes in the bottom and then cook on it directly the flame die down. The wood needs to be dry and no bigger than 2" diameter or cross section otherwise the middle is still drying and pyrolysing whilst the outside is trying to burn.

or for damper wood

2)find 25 litre litre tin can, open top like a bean tin so the lid is hinged, fill with tightly packed small dimension wood. Wire lid closed. Invert 25 litre container in aforementioned 205 litre container, again light fire in the bottom of the container but this time you can add a few air holes at the bottom. It's best if the 25 litre lid at the bottom is bedded in some old ash to prevent air getting to the char but to allow pyrolysis offgas out to join the fire.

AJH

[Mike Lane]

Dave wrote on Oct 30, 2009:

My local co-op supermarket was selling bags of briquets recently.

[Dave]

Tried 3 and they have only coal bricks for sale

Dave

[<me9]

You can't have trained them properly. They should be able to produce their own.

Modern H&S may prevent it :-(

[Dave]

Can't hire a chainsaw till am. by that time, I won't have time to make charcoal that Scouters have failed to purchase :-)

In all my experience, they have never been prepared :-(

I'm not a Scouter.

Dave

[Dave]

No 2 is very interesting, but too complicated for Scout leaders to grasp fast :-(

No. 1 is a no go due to the rain that fell today.

Many thanks

Dave

p.s.

I have noted and printed all the good ideas for next time I have to drive round finding what the Scouts didn't think of.

[Dave]

Unfortunately, self combustion produces far more bad fats into the meat than does frying.

Dave

[Dave]

Oh! that's interesting. Looks like I am going to be very busy a.m.

[Dave]

I would need to know how big the store was before going to our local one, which is about 5 miles away and is quite tiny.

Thanks

Dave

[Dave]

I'm not the Scouter, but I am married to one :-(

Dave

[JimK]

large old "nescafe" tin open at both ends - dib dib

JimK

[The Medway Handyman]

Ah. So forgetting the charcoal was your fault then? :-)

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Dave saying something like:

Burn down the Scout Hut.

[Dave]

I found out after I posted this, that they are staying at our local fire fighters training centre.

FFS if they can't come up with a solution, I don't know who can :-)

Dave

[Dave]

How could that be, she is hardly speaking to me these days:-)

Dave