This essay explores the temporality of Deleuzian ontology by recounting a day spent engaged in the practice of charcoal burning. Charcoal was an essential component of the iron industry, and by the late 16th century it was being consumed in vast quantities in the blast furnaces of large ironworks. The production of charcoal involves burning wood under controlled conditions to drive off water vapour and volatiles, creating a fuel that can reach the temperatures necessary to separate iron from its ore. Deleuze’s three syntheses of time offer a means of transformation of events and their relations. Taking his ideas on process, repetition for itself, and difference in itself, I seek to demonstrate that the temporality of the present exceeds the here and now. In doing so, I also seek to reveal the role of the past in the present, or the always already present nature of the past.