When life gives you yard waste

Add fire.  Always.

BUT... if you are careful, you can extract something useful, too.

Fire, as we view it, is a chemical reaction.  We are watching the products of a combustion reaction beautifully expand to illuminate and warm whatever we chuck next to them, be it marshmallows or a piston engine.  Oxygen is essential to get this reaction to go and so, if you limit the amount of air that gets to your yard waste (carbon rich fuel), you get an incomplete reaction.  There is still plenty left to burn on another fire... so, you have charcoal.

Now, you are playing roulette with your health if you use yard waste to make charcoal for cooking; there are some potentially lethal chemicals in the plants about your yard.  Additionally, these 'charcoal' bits are hardly the ingots we need to feed a fire with any degree of cleanliness or practicality.  Being useless for everyday survival, it seems like we are talking about art now.  Funny how that worked itself out...

Enter, wisteria trimmings:

Most of these vines are small, so they will make charcoal sticks that are far too fragile to draw with.  These small ones will be pulverized and used as pigment (more on that later).  Only big sticks will be kept for drawing charcoal.  It should be noted that wisteria is traditional as a drawing charcoal source.  The other common one is grape vines.  But I tend towards decorative and not useful plants, so there you go.  Did I mention that it is almost February and I am only now getting around to autumn pruning?

1. wisteria (or grape) vines

2. pruners/cutty thing

3. metal can with top lid removed

4. aluminium foil

5. fire source of your choice (more below) 

Cut your vines down to lengths that can fit into your can, then pack them in.

Use the foil to tightly cover the can on the top and sides.  Remember, you are trying to have a smothered fire going, an incomplete combustion reaction because of limited oxygen.  Some oxygen still needs to be there, so do not enclose the can.  Water vapor and other gas needs to escape, too.

Not the most glamorous angle, but, life is tough when you are a can.

I am using charcoal briquettes, lit to keep a flame, in a Weber kettle for my fire source.  Plus, I needed to cook something.  It should be noted that you really are not looking to add meaty-goodness into your drawing materials, so keep anything that will drip juices well away.

So, the can is going to sit in the fire (I am keeping the vents open on the top of the kettle) for about ten hours.  Basically, I let it sit over night, let the fire burn out, and then went to get it the next morning.

I'd say it's past medium-rare:

Peel back the foil and see the finished charcoal.

Yay!  Incomplete combustion!!  If more oxygen had weaseled in there, you would be left with white ash and not that iridescent black.

There still is ash and bits of sloughed-off bark in the bottom of the can.  Dump out the finished charcoal and pick out the useful bits.

Not bad for yard waste, no?

Now, all of the small vines will break when you draw with them.  So, put those aside for another project.  You have made pigment, suitable for paint emulsions and other mediums.  It is closest to Lamp Black in coloring and origin, but I feel like it deserves a more festive name which gives due reverence to the grilled chicken.  Any ideas?