Drying wood on the biochar oven before burning

I live in a very drizzly part of the world, PNW of the US, especially in between November and April.   I prefer to burn really dry wood as it smokes less and gives me more biochar for the amount of wood. More carbon is sequestered and I have more hotels for my microbes.

On my second to last biochar burn, I had to take out a lot of the wood, because it was moist. I could feel it in my hands as I was going to put it in the barrel.  I decided against burning it that time and stored it for the next time.   This last time I made biochar, I noticed the same effect. However, I got an idea.   I placed it on the outside of the 55 gallon drum I use as a TLUD.  I hoped that it would dry enough quickly on the outside of the barrel that I could soon place it inside the barrel when it was dry. I noticed that it dried so quickly that it was smoking and some lit on fire within one minute.  It had never occurred to me to dry it like this as part of the process for some reason.  This is a really quick way to dry wood that is a bit too moist to burn.  Just watch it, because I didn't realize how quickly it would start smoking and actually burning flames. It burned really well and made good biochar.

John S
PDX OR

It's not unusual. Wood that has been dried to its core, and temporarily made damp, dries out very quickly and burns like a hot damn.

In the last few years I have been keeping a few weeks' worth of wood stacked next to the bell of my RMH for final drying, and last winter when I was caught without any real reserves of dry wood, I rearranged the room to give about half a cord of space around two sides of the bell, split wet wood, and stacked the space full, putting the driest wood in the first use spot. By the time I was using the wetter wood a month in, it was essentially kiln dried and burned like crazy.