The Dirty, Dangerous Charcoal Maker's Job, 1850 Quiz

Answer: iron furnaces to extract iron from iron ore

Iron furnaces usually owned hundreds of acres where iron ore existed, not just as an investment in underground ore, but because they needed the charcoal from the wood. Coal mined from underground could be used too, and it gradually took over as the dominant fuel in the 1840-1860 period, when iron furnaces changed their technology. The gradual disappearance of the hometown blacksmith, the increasing cost of wood and increasing availability of mined coal, and other changes, eliminated the need for wood-based charcoal, and the collier's job disappeared.

Answer: one mound of wood/charcoal ran it for a day and a half

At the old Hopewell Iron Furnace, now a National Park Service site in Pennnsylvania, the NPS website estimates a collier's mound of wood, turned into charcoal, would keep the furnace burning a day and a half. One furnace required 200 acres of woods a year. Because several iron furnaces might be operating in an area, continually producing, iron regions were obvious for the changes they brought to the landscape, in part from removing the ore, in part from clearcutting the woods and letting new regrowth begin.

Answer: 30 feet across, the size of a small house

Because the mound was higher than a man in the middle, though it sloped down all around, a log was generally cut with notches for crude steps and laid on the outside, so the collier could climb up it. A mound was typically made of around 30 cords of wood. Hardwood was better than soft, quick-burning wood like pine.

A collier would usually have the area he needed clearcut, except for saplings to start the reforestation for the next cutting.

Answer: the chimney

The chimney was made of logs set in a four-log square like a cabin or three-log triangle atop each other until the right height was achieved. It created an opening going down the center of the mound, letting air in to the bottom, or not, as needed. The top of the chimney didn't stick up.

It was only level with the top of the mound and was accessed by the notched log the collier used to climb up the mound.

Answer: climbed up to the chimney hole and dropped burning coals in

The collier used the notched log to climb up to the chimney hole, cleared it of dirt and removed any covering. Then an assistant handed him a shovel full of hot coals to dump down the chimney. He recovered the chimney, and with luck, the mound would catch fire and begin smouldering.

Answer: covering the chimney or any holes with dirt

The goal was to create heat, not to burn the logs. As the wood turned to charcoal and reduced in size, the pile settled, and the collier or his assistants had to be ready day and night to cover any areas where a change in smoke color or a glow at night told them a flame was flickering near the surface.

They covered the area with dirt, patted it firmly down with shovels, and kept the mound smouldering rather than burning. They also had access to the top of the chimney, until the mound completely collapsed, and could slow the burn rate by blocking the air getting down the chimney, with dirt.

Answer: seven to ten

The collier was most likely going to be busy and not get much sleep even with assistants, so he might as well make the most of it. The Catoctin Mountain NPS site says seven; Hopewell Furnace NPS site says eight to nine, so the average was probably somewhere in that range.

Answer: two weeks

The length of time varied. Though two weeks was typical, a small mound that yielded less might last a week or ten days. At the end, there were always a few pieces of wood that weren't turned to charcoal, and they could be consolidated into their own small mound or added to another.

Answer: it was raked to cool, then loaded into wagons and taken where the buyer wanted

An iron furnace might contract for all the charcoal, might even supply the land and trees. However the contract was worked out, the collier was done as soon as he had fulfilled it and could start building new mounds if he wanted, or take a break for a season.

Answer: 30 years, so a man could cut the same acreage twice in a lifetime

This seems amazingly soon to me, for clearcutting, but several researchers say land was recut every 30 years. Perhaps there were saplings left that were quite large, or perhaps some sort of English copse method was used to maximize growth, since ironmaking came to America from England.