charcoal

A better analogy would be that of a grill that can use gas or charcoal as the fuel; different means to the same purpose.

Bulldoze it flat and sprinkle charcoal (or something black) on it to absorb more heat from the sun.

There's plenty of easily-available metal in that range, and building a forced-draft charcoal burner will get you to 1350C.

>> use home-made charcoal How do you make your charcoal?

If the compost container kept in the house has a lid with a charcoal filter on it, there's very little to no smell.

I keep a small, charcoal-filter-in-the-lid compost bucket in the kitchen, lined by compostable bags purchased from Bartell's.

The article suggests charcoal (did you read the article?) but thats problematic too.

I live in a wooded area, and use home-made charcoal to forge with instead of coal.

I tried charcoal for a while, but then switched to using propane burners and loved it.

Not unless the fuel contains only carbon - as charcoal does.

I had a similar response, charcoal is still used to draw with and that is what, 100,000 years old by now?

So early technology, like charcoal:-), easy to make the pre-cursors.

"Charcoal briquette cracks 8192-bit RSA keys in seconds!"

Charcoal is nice because it's a lot less intimidating, is easier to work with, and it's easier to achieve higher temperatures with it for if you want to do experiments with melting stuff, so I recommend starting with it.