MikeMandaville writes:

Since I plan on making my own charcoal from scrap wood, after I build
the oven to make my charcoal, I suppose that my basic cost will be the
gasoline which it will take for me to drive around scrounging up my
wood, and the time which it will take me to cook it.

So you want to be a collier! I admire anyone who could improvise foundry
work down to the very fuel itself. But only for hobby purposes, as I just
can't imagine that BTUs harvested from that source will be more economical
than hydrocarbon fuels at 20 or 30 cents per lb. That's a good thing,
otherwise the forests would be stripped, as they were for coking in the
18th and 19th centuries.