The Creation of a Turret Clock

Interesting...

  Watching the show "Worst Jobs in History" hosted by Tony Robinson (Baldric of Black Adder).  One of the jobs they just showed was something that I was interested in trying sometime.  They were showing the historical method of creating charcoal.  Charcoal, to give a more precise definition, is wood that has had moisture cooked out of it without actually burning the wood.  Charcoal burns much hotter and cleaner than wood.  Charcoal was the primary fuel for blacksmiths until fairly recent history.
  For economic reasons, most smiths today use either coal (which converts to coke in the forge) or propane.  I would like to try charcoal someday just to say that I have tried it.  A pet project somewhere down the road would actually be to make some charcoal.
  The process is fairly simple but it takes about 100 hours of constant attention.  Wood is stacked on end in a circle.  The circle is about 10-20 feet in diameter and about 5 feet high.  This pile of wood is covered with sod.  The center of the pile is lit on fire and allowed to slowly burn.  Very high degree of care must be taken to not allow the fire through the sod.  When a hole breaks through on the sod, it is immediately covered to keep the fire from getting enough air.  At the end of the process, there is a big pile of charcoal in the center.
  Another job on the show was guys that looked for bog iron.  Bog iron is a source of iron ore that can be smelted to extract the iron.  The way it is found is that you wade through a bog.  You take a thin, long stick and poke into the bog.  When you hit something, you dig and pull out a grapefruit sized lump of the bog iron.