Fire is FUN part 1: Charcoal Sticks

Lascaux Cave, Wikimedia Commons

“Vine” and “willow” are the two most popular types of charcoal sticks for artists. Often my students are surprised to learn what a primitive material this is, and that “vine” refers to the stems of grape vine and “willow” branches of that tree. It’s likely that charcoal was the first drawing material, simply taken from wood that had cooled off after a fire. Certainly, charcoal was used tens of thousands of years ago, as cave paintings attest.
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Chunks of charcoal off a log are not elegant drawing tools. The charcoal sticks Drawing I students get to know up close and personal would not be possible with just grabbing stuff out of a quenched fire. Mother Earth News, The book The Organic Artist and many other sources all recommended the use of a lidded tin with a small hole punched in the top for steam to escape. You don’t want ash, you want the black charcoal and not any of the grey ash, and with these tin “kilns” that’s what I was hoping to get. I used empty cookie, tea and other used tines, even a little mint tin. I chose to make vine charcoal, because I have a grape vine in my back yard. I’ve been told February is ideal grape vine pruning time, so last February I did a major pruning of my vine, and packed the contents into the tins. The idea is to pack them in tight so they don’t warp when fired, but retain a straight stick form. It involves a lot of cutting and you’re also supposed to strip the bark. 

I didn’t put the lids on at first, to give them a chance to dry out. Then I put the lids on and didn’t open them up until I wanted to show someone how they were packed before I put them in the fire. There was some kind of mold that had formed in-between the sticks. Gross. But it wasn’t like the sticks weren’t bone dry; they weren’t rotted, I was hoping the mold would burn off in the firing.

The tin "kilns" in the fire; all the paint burned off them, they actually look pretty interesting after getting burned up.

On June 29, I made a fire in the fire pit out at the NCC East 40. I had read conflicting information about the actual fire; one place said you have to have hardwood, and don’t put the tins down until there is no flame; like how my dad would cook food on a charcoal grill the the backyard. I always was surprised that he waited until there was no flame, and said the coals were hotter than the flame. Another sources said build the fire around the  tins, and showed a photo with flames engulfing the tin “kilns.” There was cardboard and scraps of wood from who knows what that were already in the fire pit, so I assumed they were good to burn. I looped the cardboard so there would be air in the middle, put the tins on top of the cardboard and packed the wood around the tines so they wouldn’t fall off the cardboard. It worked!
The next thing is to wait around an hour after the fire gets hot. I’ll bet the cave people didn’t time this with their phone, but I set the timer on mine and watched the fire closely. The other thing is, if you see fire shooting out the hole-or if steam stops coming out of the hole-you have to quench the fire a.s.a.p. I had a big bucket of dirt and a shovel. Someone had left a charred wok near the fire pit, I decided that would be where I put the tins before dumping dirt on them. Not surprisingly, the smallest tin was the first to flame. I quenched it and keep watch on the rest. I forgot to put a hole in the largest tin, which I found out the hard way-the steam forced the lid open. I put a big rock on the lid. Eventually, fire started shooting out the side of the lid, and so I had to quench that. The smaller pieces were fine, even in the big one that didn’t have a hole. I think the steam just got out the side of the lid, but the lid didn’t blow off because of the rock. When the timer went off on my phone, I took the rest of the tins out of the fire (scooped them up in a metal shovel) and dumped dirt on them.

All of the tins after opening them up. The one on top left is pigment, look at July 2 blog for a post about that pigment.

I waited about a half hour before testing if I could take the dirt off the hole in the top of the tins, starting with the little one, using heat-proof gloves and tongs. I moved all the tins to the breezeway, where I put them on fireproof concrete board. Sandra Zajacek and Michael did some clay experiments after I was finished with the fire, so I got out of quenching the fire at the end. The next day, I opened up the tins and discovered that my success rate was really close to 100%. No ash. Just a couple of the largest pieces from the big tin that need some more fire. You can always fire again, but if you get white ash you have lost your material and have to start over. So all in all, I was thrilled. This post is so long, I’ll make the next post about the color change in the pigment I fired. One last photo, me testing them out on a page in my notebook. I found I had some really great sticks, and a variety of hard to soft, thick to thin. They marked and smeared easily, but weren’t too soft, so you could smear and still see the lines if I wanted. Honestly, I’m astounded it worked so well.

Marks made with some of the charcoal, one of the sticks and a big hunk of charcoal also on top of the paper.