Nothing to fear but fear itself or just plain stupidity! Study up a little on what you plan to do and be safe about it. You can hurt yourself changing a car tire, or play with "explosives" safely. Just depends on the person, paying attention, and learning what you are doing before doing it.

 Many people like those model rockets like you buy at Wal-Mart. I basically built mine own. The correct pipe, some "explosive", an aluminum can, cloth rag for a parrachute fastened to can. Perfectly safe for me, some fool might hurt themself looking into the pipe when it goes off and blow their danged head off. Just depends.

 If you want wood gas I have post here somewhere about a basic charcoal maker I built in about 10-20 minutes I think it was. Took me longer to post the pictures than it did to build the barrel and stand. If your wanting to store the gas, that might be a better way to go than producer gas.

Basically make a 3 sided enclosure with a top to hold heat, weld a 2" pipe onto a 55gal drum, place alot of dry wood loosely in the barrel (not tight), seal the lid back on, bake at about 500F or more. Just build a large fire under the barrel to bake it. The hotter the fire the faster you get the gas, just don't over do it. The less heat you loose the less feul you need. Placing a front 4th side helps too if you leave plenty of room for the air to get into the fire.
When the gas stops comming out the charcoal is done, let it cool (like over night) before you open the barrel. If you open the barrel while it's too hot the charcoals ingnite and burns.
 If you don't want the charcoal for anything else then use it to bake the next batch of wood to get the gas :)

Nice thing about this is you can also make it self feuling, just loop the pipe comming out the top under the barrel, cap the end, drill holes for like a gas oven burner. When the gas come out the pipe the fire lights the gas, the burning gas heats the barrel cooking out more gas. If you let it go wild you get more heat than you need and burn off all the gas for no reason, but you get great charcoal. If you tap into the pipe with a T at the top and use a valve you can adjust the flow under the barrel and burn off some gas to make more gas while still keeping gas for other uses. Just need to play with it to get it right.

The first gas you will get will probably not be good, it will contain more moisture and resins etc.. just pipe it under the barrel to burn it if you want. When that's burning good start collecting the gas from the second pipe, run it through a filter to remove moisture, tars and resins and cool it. You should not have much trash beyond the filter, mostly just good burnable gas. Charcoal also works well as a filter.
Because you are not burning the wood that is producing the gas I don't think you will have carbonmonoxide, your not actually burning the wood in the barrel, just baking out the impurities.

 I have not stored any of the gas yet myself, I have ran a riding mower engine on it alittle but I hadn't filtered it or cooled it like I should have at that time. I just wanted the Charcoal and the gas was a by-product. I have many projects going at once here and have not totally finished any of them yet. I get to the point one is working and I get back on another that isn't working.

Anyway, if you try the above do not build a pressure in the steel 55gal barrel or you might burst it. Make sure you also do it in a safe area where you won't burn anything down etc.. Maybe do some searching for charcoal makers, foundries, retorts, etc.. even blacksmithing. This is a great way to make charcoal for all the above uses plus anything else you can use it for. You will probably find pictures of this type setup, I lost the link but I saw one with flames shooting out about 2-3' from a block oven once, all he was doing was a wild fire burning off the gas just for the charcoal. That one of course was self feuling once it was started. Interesting picture.

 It's not hard to make the gas, the trick is how to store it. Be safe!
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nothing to lose