Charcoal and the Model T
Henry Ford was a damn good entrepreneur. One of the by-products of making Model Ts was a lot of scrap wood. Now good ol’ Henry said to himself - how can I make a dollar out of that scrap wood? How about making charcoal? Yeah - that’s it - charcoal. And that’s how Kingsford Charcoal was born.
I found this great article by Joe O’Connel, past president of the California BBQ Association that explains it all. Take it away Joe….
Around 1915, Henry Ford was using large amount of wood to manufacture automobiles. Ford operated a sawmill in the forests around Iron Mountain, Michigan to make the wooden parts, so there were piles of wood scraps. Ford learned of a process, which had been developed and patented by Orin F. Stafford, which involved chipping wood into small pieces, converting them into charcoal, grinding the charcoal into powder, adding a binder and compressing the mix into the now-familiar, pillow-shaped briquettes.By 1921, a charcoal-making plant was in full operation.
According to Kingsford:
E. G. Kingsford, a lumberman who owned one of Ford’s earliest automobile sales agencies and was distantly related, briefly served as manager of the briquette operation. A company town was built nearby and named Kingsford. In 1951, an investment group bought the plant, renamed the business the Kingsford Chemical Company, and took over operations. Its successor, The Kingsford Products Company, was acquired by The Clorox Company of Oakland, California, in 1973.
Today, KINGSFORD charcoal is manufactured from wood charcoal, anthracite coal, mineral charcoal, starch, sodium nitrate, limestone, sawdust, and borax. The wood and other high-carbon materials are heated in special ovens with little or no air. This process removes water, nitrogen and other elements, leaving almost pure carbon.
The briquettes do not contain petroleum or any petroleum by-products. KINGSFORD charcoal briquettes with mesquite contain the same high-quality ingredients as KINGSFORD, but with the addition of real mesquite wood throughout.
Manufacturing briquettes begins with preparing the wood charcoal using one of the following methods:
Retort processing — Waste wood is processed through a large furnace with multiple hearths (called a retort) in a controlled-oxygen atmosphere. The wood is progressively
charred as it drops from one hearth to the next.
Kiln processing — The waste wood is cut into slabs and stacked in batches in a kiln that chars the wood in a controlled-oxygen atmosphere.
Once the wood charcoal is prepared, it is crushed and combined with the other ingredients, formed into pillow-shaped briquettes and dried. The advantage of using charcoal over wood is that charcoal burns hotter with less smoke.
Photo courtesy of The Clorox Corporation
