[Sca-cooks] Charcoal

[Volker Bach]

jenne at fiedlerfamily.net schrieb:
>
> > >Correct. But if I had the hardwood for this, even chunks, it would
> > >more likely end up in furniture or boxes or somesuch and not converted
> > >to charcoal. I can *buy* the hardwood charcoal for less than I can
> > >buy the hardwood.
> > Well, presumably charcoal would be made from scraps, either bits
> > left over from other projects, or even scrap trees that are too bent/too
> > slashed/too lightning scarred to be used for furniture. . .
>
> Um, do you have any documentation for this assertion? Because there's
> nothing in any of the mentions I've seen about charcoal burning to
> indicate that scrap wood was used.

Well, we'd have to have a definition of 'scrap
wood' first. I know for a fact that in Early
Modern Germany, charcoal burning was carried on in
the forest fringes, so there would have been no
point in bringing scrap from city or village
workshops back out there. It also most likely
would have been the size to be more profitably
used in kitchen stoves or fireplaces. Modern
'museum' coalburners use wood in lengths of about
1 meter, though I don't think their techniques are
docúmented back much past the 17th century.
On the other hand, most Central European
coalburners operated on somebody's land, and
usually not their own (this may well have been
different for example in Russia or Colonial
America). The owner of the lanmd would probably
have gone in for maximum profit, which, given the
prices paid for prime building timber in the 13th
century and later (I have no information about
earlier prices - anyone?) probably means big trees
are right out, too, even if they are crooked - no
problem for a good sawyer or carpenter, just
awkward for a mechanised sawmill. (There is even a
miracle story illustrating the dearth of prime
timber, about how churchmen were told that there
were no trees of the required size within miles,
only to go out into the forest and find five
within a day, but I'm not sure I could track this
one down, it's a vague memory from happy days in
the Berkeley Library). So my guess would be that
coalburners would have had access on good
quantities of thick branches and flawed trees
which would be left behind by timber cutting, and
in a 'balanced' forest economy would have used
this. This matches well with the size of a coal
whateveritscalled on a 15th century illustration
for Pliny which looks about 7 feet high and 5-6
wide. There is also a complaint from a 14th
century source in North Germany (unfortunately not
quoted, just paraphrased, in the Propyläen
Technikgeschichte) that coalburners in the
Luneburg area cut down valuable trees, indicating
that they ought not have - at least in the opinion
of the timber users.

But I have no proof either :-(

Giano