James,
Just to note, the process and apparatus which Dan in Oklahoma described for making charcoal also goes by the name of “Gasifier.” The venting of the volatile gases in the wood can be put to several purposes, to include running carburetor engines on generators and trucks. The Russians used this system extensively for rear area operations as liquid petrol was priority for front line vehicles and aircraft. They would fire them up at breakfast time and run them all day. Me thinks that today’s breakfast was probably cooked on yesterdays driving around…the charcoal. Some examples of delivery trucks in the US during the war also ran on them because of fuel rationing.
You won’t be winning any races with this set-up, but you can remain mobile. LowTech Magazine has a nice spread on the old and new.
There was also a scene in the Discovery Channel series “The Colony” where they rigged one up with a 5 gal metal Jerry can in an open drum burner and fed the gas into the pressure washer / generator contraption they had built. Primitive, but it made the thing run. Of particular note, the gas hose was not sealed directly onto the carburetor intake, but had enough gap left so it could suck in a bit of fresh air with the wood gas.
In the micro level, a friend who does primitive rendezvous shoots showed me his shoe polish can gasifier whereby he made tinder starters from simple cotton cloth patching. He put a pin hole in the top of the can, put his cut patches in it and placed the whole thing in the camp fire until smoke stopped coming out. What remained was perfectly charcoaled cotton patching that would take a spark from a flint striker really well, which got the larger tinder going nicely.
All sorts of things possible from a bit of mad science and some ingenuity. – Jim in Virginia