Making Charcoal and Biochar: A comprehensive guide

Description

Making Charcoal and Biochar - a comprehensive guide is written with the intersted amateur in mind, with the certainty that anyone who has a go at making charcoal will soon get the bug. Before you know it, you will be upgrading to a shiny new retort and there will be no looking back! This book gives a wide range of possibilities for making charcoal on a small scale and for commercial production. There are chapters on the heritage skills of earth burns, the enduring popularity of metal kilns and the future represented by the charcoal retort. Biochar - or small particle charcoal - has been heralded as an ancient but rediscovered 'super substance' that can increase soil fertility and productivity whilst locking up carbon into the ground. This book looks at the ongoing discussion and weighs up the evidence. It concludes with a celebration of the myriad ways in which charcoal can be put to use. 195 colour photographs

Rebecca Oaks set up her coppice business in 1994, specialising in hazel hurdle making and coppice products. The bread and butter money though, came from firewood in the winter and making twelve tonnes of charcoal through the summer. She is co-author with Edward Mills of Coppicing and Coppice Crafts and Greenwood Crafts, both publsihed by Crowood.