Recent discussion on The Forestry Forum about cladding a timber building with charred timbers has caused some interest to awaken in this ancient form of timber preservation. The Forestry Forum example shows charred plank cladding applied to a timber building that was burnt on the exterior surface using an industrial type blowtorch.
Professor Terunobu Fugimori recently gave a talk on traditional Japanese architecture at The Weald & Downland Open Air Museum and also demonstrated how nothing more than 3-4 sheets of scrunched up newspaper together with a few wire ties and a match was all that was needed to produced 3 charred planks in about 2-4 minutes.
The three planks were wired together to form a triangular section chimney and the newspaper was then stuffed up the bttom of the chimney and then lit. This resulted in black smoke bellowing from the top of the plank chimney.
Soon the black smoke changed to clear smoke and then flames issued from the top of the plank chimney.
The fire burning in the interior surface of the plank chimney was allowed to burn for about 2 minutes until flames were seen to start emerging from the cracks at the plank joins.
The plank chimney was then toppled over onto the ground and the planks laid on top of one and other to exclude air thereby extinguishing the fire.
After a minute or so the planks were then laid out charred side up and allowed to cool.
The planks were then examined close up where it revealed that the surface was burnt fairly evenly over the entire length.
Thereafter many of the observers then had a go at charring planks resulting in a series of plank chimneys all burning at the same time.
The simplicity and effectiveness of this process it quite amazing.
Chilterns
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Plank Charring
