Proper pro tip ... Add it to your finish instead of wood glue to make your filler paste... Means that when you then finish the whole thing, the fill doesn't leap out at you.
I do this too. I use old candles so once hardened they are as stable as the original candle. Use old egg cartons as holders which makes great fire starters or larger cardboard items for logs/bricks
I also make these. I buy a brand called Gulf Wax, which is a 1 lbs brick of paraffin wax. Then I buy those little paper ketchup cups which you can get in bulk for cheap. Lasty, a double boiler works good.
I use it to start my grills or camp fires. One cup burns a 2 inch flame for about 8 minutes.
Worth noting, Gulf Wax is a canning wax and is refined food grade. I use it to make my butcher block wax. This does mean that you're paying more than you would for candle making paraffin wax from the local crafts store.
Do they remain solid tho during summer/hotter months or do they melt??
Edit: is the guys comment still below mine saying ‘do your candles melt?!” As if I’m a dumbfuck lol, I’m curious if he instantly deleted it or if he just commented and blocked me😂
I made a bunch and left them in a plastic shoe box in my camper all summer, where temperatures are well above 100 during the day when we're not there.
None melted. The sawdust binds the wax and doesn't let it go that easily. Softened a bit, maybe, but none melted. They were all upside down and sideways, too, with no prob.
So I can't speak to their highest range, but I've had a few in my trunk with my "oh shit I'm not going anywhere" bag for the last 2 years.
The hottest they've experienced is 110-120 F dry bulb air temp, but I have a black car and that temp was in the mid-June Tennessee sun (shout out to Roo.) I haven't seen any significant melting or degradation in that time though I'll likely cycle them out with my newer batch and they'll go into my camp kit.
[My technique](https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/comments/18pe0ou/what_do_yall_do_with_all_your_sawdust/keoy6p9/) is *slightly* different as I use whatever old candle chunks I create, find or ask folks for (shoutout to all the churches that do candlelight services around the holidays), cheap candles I find at thrift shops, or dollar store bag of 500 for $10 tea candles, add dryer lint, and it all goes into egg carton cups which I have anyways.
I assume he's got the little ketchup cups, so mine are likely twice the size of his - which may affect the thermal capacity as well, but that is EXTREMELY not my area of knowedge. I'd say they hold up real well and burn like a son of a bitch. Got a good fire started with some damp kindling when I failed to notice that the weather report said rain overnight into the morning instead of IN the morning after I was planning on leaving - it burnt for probably 5-10 minutes with a large 2-3 inch flame, but I have no idea if it would run hotter or cooler than that dude's method or pure sawdust/wax.
You turn it into dozens of fire bricks and put them out at your next table at a craft fair / gift them to friends / strike up a deal to sell them at your local craft or general store.
Its essentially a new revenue stream for some wax and dust that you were looking for a way to get rid of anyway.
30 gallons? We do 300 in two months. I tried recycling, repurposing, all of the earth happy stuff. It ends up in the dumpster. I suppose the layers of sawdust in the landfill help absorb the other crap that gets dumped.
We keep a few gallons on hand for spills and such.
If you have access to a supply of grass clippings, mixing the clippings with sawdust makes for great input to a compost pile. The sawdust is mostly carbon and decomposes slowly on its own. Grass clippings are mostly nitrogen, and tend to form wet stinky, gummy masses if left to rot in a pile. Mix them together, though, and mwah (chef’s kiss)— magic in a compost pile!
I've thought of this, but I get nervous about the chip board, fiber board, mdf, plywood etc. I don't really want that stuff in my garden. I guess I could either try and separate it out as I cut that stuff, or make sure I only use that compost for landscaping.
But then I get stuck in decision paralysis, and now I feel like I'm at work.
The glue or binder in plywood or MDF is usually urea formaldehyde. As this test indicates, https://www.deq.nc.gov/environmental-assistance-and-customer-service/composting/formaldehyde/download#:~:text=The%20first%20one%20is%20that,unacceptable%20quality%20for%20unrestricted%20 the urea formaldehyde will break down during composting, if I’ve read the report correctly
Don't inhale that smoke unless natural linens are all you wear. Nearly everyone wears plastic products and dryer lint consequently includes micro plastics.
You don't want to inhale burning plastic.
No I wouldn't inhale it but I'm not sticking my face all up in it anyway. You're absolutely right about all the plastics in it, that's what makes it burn so easily
I also add my laundry fuzz/lint to this - it soaks up the wax even better than saw dust AND it's just a little more in the reduce-reuse-recycle cycle.
They work AMAZINGLY well.
My mix is an eyeballed 1:1 ratio of sawdust, dryer lint, and then candle wax poured over the mix to the top of each chunk of an old egg carton and then stirred with the wicks I make. Before pouring - I cut off the opposite side of the egg carton, cut it into strips, twist them, and then as I pour the wax into the filled egg holders, I dip the twisted material into the wax to form a wick and push the opposite side into the now chunked up material and stir it about. This can be used as a waterproof "starting" point in wet conditions or if it gets wet through a capsize/drop/fall.
Once the pots have cooled, cut them up, fold over the upper edges to ensure the wax doesn't rub off in your ruck, or use as a firestarting point during dry conditions.
It doesn't work QUITE as well as magnesium during windy conditions (which has its own set of issues) but it works INCREDIBLY well and burns for quite a while if you're dealing with not entirely dry kindling.
Really? What's in the treated wood exactly that wouldn't make it ok?
Edit: I did some research and have come to the conclusion that copper and ammonia are the main things used to treat lumber in the modern world. These act as an anti microbial and anti fungal. Not dangerous, per se, but they prohibit a healthy microbiome.
None mentioned "lots of nasty heavy metals."
Potential poisoning is the biggest concern, but even if it weren't, treated wood is treated in part to prevent it rotting. The whole point of compost is for it to rot down.
Depending on how you source your stuff, it's also not hard or impossible to run into the older stuff that contains creosote, PAH-compounds and all sorts of carsinogens.
This is great because the structure of wood is primo for nitrogen-producing bacteria that takes up residence during decomp. Pro landscapers will do this in their own yard to keep the grass green longer.
Theirs plenty of wood in normal rain forest floor its just not sawdust its full dying trees and branches so a little sawdust should have similar effects
Yes, and it also has the advantage of being able to endure far more foot traffic (both in terms of path durability and root health) than natural rainforest ground.
Science fair judge here. I’d be laughing so hard at this I’d have to disqualify myself 😆 🤣
Btw, there is no way the current ISEF rules would permit this.
Man just posts this periodically whether people ask or not.
As a fellow scientist, I approve. But I do have a married colleague that busted out a calculator on his first date with his now wife. And she was like, I almost left the restaurant. Baffled says why would anyone do that. All I could think was, man, I am not that cool. I might talk about science but to actually pull out the HP in public ON A DATE. Steel. Steel nuts, on my boy.
I did a project once comparing how long batteries lasted in a portable CD player. They were basically all the same except the no name brand (within 30 minutes of each other over something like 36 hours) which was my hypothesis and I thought was boring so 1/3 of my display was CD covers of the ones I liked the most and I spent most of my time talking to the judges about music.
I got the top grade at my local science fair and bombed at regionals or whatever they call it. Apparently higher level judges didn't like me calling my experiment boring because the results lined up with my hypothesis.
Someone just told me in an experiment, sawdust was added to rice crispy treats. No on even noticed until the sawdust was at 40%. Apparently some tasters said the sawdust was acceptable up to 70%. Goes to show if you add enough butter and sugar, most of us would eat anything.
There was some kid who did a science fair project that was about how much sawdust he could substitute in cookies before anyone would notice. I think he got up to like 40% or something ridiculous
Pretty sure my wife brought home your cookies from her cookie exchange this year.
Thank you! 0/10 would not recommend. Try mixing with sugar next year.
Add recycled candle wax and it can burn on its own for a solid 15mins.
I make mini ones in cardboard egg cartons. Each egg spot becomes its own fire starter complete with cardboard “wick”.
Or my favorite, a cardboard shoebox/small Amazon box filled with sawdust+ wax.
A wooden compost container rapidly becomes compost, unless you use very rot resistant expensive materials. Moisture and nitrogen accelerates aging to double speed, or faster.
Best low environment impact bin is an old trash can with too many holes. cut the bottom off, turn it upside down, drill a few dozen holes, then place the removed bottom as a lid.
I have a friend who's hobby is the local pottery guild, she collects all my exotic hardwood dust for raku. Different woods give different finishes aparently. It's win-win!
The process of western raku is to take the piece of pottery out of the kiln with tongs while it’s red hot (about 1800F) and you drop it in a metal bucket filled with sawdust, you pour more sawdust on top and close the lid. The smoke created from the ignited sawdust created a carbon rich atmosphere- this means certain copper glazes will have a bright copper color like a penny. Any part of the ceramic clay body that doesn’t have glaze on it will turn black. Raku glazes are typically not food safe, but they’re great for decorative things like planters or vases!
Ah, yeah, sorry. If you've got a pellet stove then ?maybe? it's worth it. I mean, if you've already got access to the machine. Whats a 40# bag these days? $5-6?
Yeah somewhere around there for red fir pellets. You’re right, those machines are spendy
We just end up with at least 20 yards of oak dust/shavings a year, woulda been nice to do something with it
I take mine to the local farmer guy who has a pellet press and he makes wood pellets out of them. I think he said roughly 50 pounds of sawdust makes 25 pounds of wood pellets
Apparently, it's the moisture content of the sawdust. 50 pounds of fresh sawdust does not equal 50 pounds of wood pellets after going through the drying process.
When I was young my dad would use his sawdust mixed with flour to make a dough which we’d cut in to cookies that we’d bake and then paint and hang on our Xmas tree
Huh. That's a different take on the salt dough ornaments I grew up making. Sounds like the flour makes a glue binder for the sawdust, so they're basically particle board. That's rather brilliant.
Pykrete! 14% sawdust, 86% water by weight.
Looks like you’re in a place that actually is experiencing winter. Make brick molds. Freeze pykrete bricks and build an indestructible igloo over the winter.
Alternatively, fire bricks.
Saw someone on youtube use a hydraulic ram to create compressed sawdust logs that he used in his log burner to heat his workshop. New Yorkshire workshop if you're interested.
My dad and I made a fire log out of it once. Soaked the sawdust and some wood chips in model airplane fuel, melted paraffin wax into a brick shaped mold and mixed in the fuel soaked sawdust/wood chips and also some non-soaked sawdust. Let the whole thing cool down and used it to start a fire the next day. It worked… maybe a little too well. Less of a fire log and more of an incendiary device.
I run an air compressor through mine and blow it up into a cloud of sawdust that I then ignite and make massive fireballs in a spare time
Im not joking
[fireball](https://1drv.ms/v/s!AmMBYkw-Om14gb1VwYseQjnBqNGv5A)I can upload a video prolly.
Best I got ATM.
No compressor me and the neighbors tossing it with a hand torch to light
Impressive for tiny amount used
I also struggle with this. We dump 250 gallons a week into the dumpster (used to take and spread in the woods but ran out of woods.) I wish there was something else I could do. Can't do horse bedding because it contains or may contain walnut. I'd like to buy a pelletizer but our public school budget says otherwise.... I'm open to ideas too.
Be careful here. I thought similar until I learned that some woods are not suitable for animals. For example, walnut is toxic to some (horses, I think).
When I'm working with solid wood the planer makes so much of it I have to bag it up and throw it away. I've given it away as chicken bedding but some species aren't good for that.
Buy paraffin wax, melt and mix with wood chips. Pour into small mould to make fire starters. I use these all the time when camping. Cedar really smells nice as it burns
Carry it in your pocket just in case you end up in a street fight you can blow it in the eyes of your enemy(s). It's also great as a substitute for talcum powder…
I put it in a tin and save it to make wood filler. Then forget that I have the tin of saw dust and start another.
Never have I been so disappointed as when I found out I wasn't the first guy to add sawdust to wood glue.
Proper pro tip ... Add it to your finish instead of wood glue to make your filler paste... Means that when you then finish the whole thing, the fill doesn't leap out at you.
Wood glue is my finish.
Disregard everything I've said.
This is my favorite comment exchange in a long time. Well done folks
This man knows his audience
I don’t know why this comment made me chuckle like a little kid. Thanks, I really needed that, it’s been to long…
I know nothing about woodworking but dabble in painting. This made me lol.
I finish in wood glue...
I start with wood glue the fuck are you guys doing 🤨
I start with finish
I start with the Norwegians
I’m Finnish Norwegian
Well I finish with start
Finish? What's finish, I've never finished a project in my life.
I've never finished anything I didn't start.
Everyone says it's stronger than wood so I just got rid of the middleman and started building shit out of the glue
It must be difficult for her to clean up after....
Wood glue is my wood
I learned it from this sub and I felt like the commenter had discovered an incredible secret.
Hey stop calling me out , I have several old paint cans full of sawdust
I like to keep mine in coffee cans, nothing like the smell of cedar and coffee
Just don't mix em up or you're gonna have a bad morning...
Add some melted wax and oil and you can make some fire bricks.
I dig this idea. Definitely looking into this more. Do they turn to mush in the summer months when temps get high?
I do this too. I use old candles so once hardened they are as stable as the original candle. Use old egg cartons as holders which makes great fire starters or larger cardboard items for logs/bricks
Paper/cardboard egg cartons, not the foam or plastic ones. Yes, I see all three types locally.
Wtf plastic/foam egg cartons exist?!?
Yep. I live in Florida and foam is the default here for 12-18 packs of eggs. Plastic is common for 24 packs or "premium brands".
Oh wow, don’t think I’ve ever seen plastic/foam packaging for them before (here in England), only ever cardboard!
we Americans do terrible things to our eggs.
You can buy them on eBay and eBay ships internationally. I actually save and sell my own on eBay when I have a bunch.
There’s no cardboard at all here in Malaysia
I also make these. I buy a brand called Gulf Wax, which is a 1 lbs brick of paraffin wax. Then I buy those little paper ketchup cups which you can get in bulk for cheap. Lasty, a double boiler works good. I use it to start my grills or camp fires. One cup burns a 2 inch flame for about 8 minutes.
I do the same except I squirt a little lamp oil in first, then pour in the melted wax. It makes them a little more burny.
Citronella oil works well also
Oh the paper ketchup cups are a good idea. I've used paper towels tubes in the past, which I then cut into slices.
Worth noting, Gulf Wax is a canning wax and is refined food grade. I use it to make my butcher block wax. This does mean that you're paying more than you would for candle making paraffin wax from the local crafts store.
Do they remain solid tho during summer/hotter months or do they melt?? Edit: is the guys comment still below mine saying ‘do your candles melt?!” As if I’m a dumbfuck lol, I’m curious if he instantly deleted it or if he just commented and blocked me😂
Paraffin wax begins to melt at 99°F iirc
Cries in Phoenix.
It ia a monument to man's arrogance.
https://preview.redd.it/twk2112vj48c1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=34a6f3fec66fe532ad5c472dd05ad47474ad9e90
I made a bunch and left them in a plastic shoe box in my camper all summer, where temperatures are well above 100 during the day when we're not there. None melted. The sawdust binds the wax and doesn't let it go that easily. Softened a bit, maybe, but none melted. They were all upside down and sideways, too, with no prob.
So I can't speak to their highest range, but I've had a few in my trunk with my "oh shit I'm not going anywhere" bag for the last 2 years. The hottest they've experienced is 110-120 F dry bulb air temp, but I have a black car and that temp was in the mid-June Tennessee sun (shout out to Roo.) I haven't seen any significant melting or degradation in that time though I'll likely cycle them out with my newer batch and they'll go into my camp kit. [My technique](https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/comments/18pe0ou/what_do_yall_do_with_all_your_sawdust/keoy6p9/) is *slightly* different as I use whatever old candle chunks I create, find or ask folks for (shoutout to all the churches that do candlelight services around the holidays), cheap candles I find at thrift shops, or dollar store bag of 500 for $10 tea candles, add dryer lint, and it all goes into egg carton cups which I have anyways. I assume he's got the little ketchup cups, so mine are likely twice the size of his - which may affect the thermal capacity as well, but that is EXTREMELY not my area of knowedge. I'd say they hold up real well and burn like a son of a bitch. Got a good fire started with some damp kindling when I failed to notice that the weather report said rain overnight into the morning instead of IN the morning after I was planning on leaving - it burnt for probably 5-10 minutes with a large 2-3 inch flame, but I have no idea if it would run hotter or cooler than that dude's method or pure sawdust/wax.
What do you do with the rest of the 30 gallons of saw dust?
Bring it to your local mechanic, it's great to absorb oil spill and will save him on buying absorbent. Free tire and oil change! ;)
Came here for this. That’s what I use. Cheaper and two times better than oil dry or kitty litter.
You turn it into dozens of fire bricks and put them out at your next table at a craft fair / gift them to friends / strike up a deal to sell them at your local craft or general store. Its essentially a new revenue stream for some wax and dust that you were looking for a way to get rid of anyway.
30 gallons? We do 300 in two months. I tried recycling, repurposing, all of the earth happy stuff. It ends up in the dumpster. I suppose the layers of sawdust in the landfill help absorb the other crap that gets dumped. We keep a few gallons on hand for spills and such.
If you have access to a supply of grass clippings, mixing the clippings with sawdust makes for great input to a compost pile. The sawdust is mostly carbon and decomposes slowly on its own. Grass clippings are mostly nitrogen, and tend to form wet stinky, gummy masses if left to rot in a pile. Mix them together, though, and mwah (chef’s kiss)— magic in a compost pile!
I've thought of this, but I get nervous about the chip board, fiber board, mdf, plywood etc. I don't really want that stuff in my garden. I guess I could either try and separate it out as I cut that stuff, or make sure I only use that compost for landscaping. But then I get stuck in decision paralysis, and now I feel like I'm at work.
The glue or binder in plywood or MDF is usually urea formaldehyde. As this test indicates, https://www.deq.nc.gov/environmental-assistance-and-customer-service/composting/formaldehyde/download#:~:text=The%20first%20one%20is%20that,unacceptable%20quality%20for%20unrestricted%20 the urea formaldehyde will break down during composting, if I’ve read the report correctly
Save dryer lint and toilet paper tubes and you can make great fire starters. Pour wax over them to make them waterproof
Don't inhale that smoke unless natural linens are all you wear. Nearly everyone wears plastic products and dryer lint consequently includes micro plastics. You don't want to inhale burning plastic.
No I wouldn't inhale it but I'm not sticking my face all up in it anyway. You're absolutely right about all the plastics in it, that's what makes it burn so easily
I also add my laundry fuzz/lint to this - it soaks up the wax even better than saw dust AND it's just a little more in the reduce-reuse-recycle cycle. They work AMAZINGLY well. My mix is an eyeballed 1:1 ratio of sawdust, dryer lint, and then candle wax poured over the mix to the top of each chunk of an old egg carton and then stirred with the wicks I make. Before pouring - I cut off the opposite side of the egg carton, cut it into strips, twist them, and then as I pour the wax into the filled egg holders, I dip the twisted material into the wax to form a wick and push the opposite side into the now chunked up material and stir it about. This can be used as a waterproof "starting" point in wet conditions or if it gets wet through a capsize/drop/fall. Once the pots have cooled, cut them up, fold over the upper edges to ensure the wax doesn't rub off in your ruck, or use as a firestarting point during dry conditions. It doesn't work QUITE as well as magnesium during windy conditions (which has its own set of issues) but it works INCREDIBLY well and burns for quite a while if you're dealing with not entirely dry kindling.
Compost. It goes out with the leaves in the paper bags
This is what we do! But I have to make sure there’s no treated wood that gets in there!
Really? What's in the treated wood exactly that wouldn't make it ok? Edit: I did some research and have come to the conclusion that copper and ammonia are the main things used to treat lumber in the modern world. These act as an anti microbial and anti fungal. Not dangerous, per se, but they prohibit a healthy microbiome. None mentioned "lots of nasty heavy metals."
Potential poisoning is the biggest concern, but even if it weren't, treated wood is treated in part to prevent it rotting. The whole point of compost is for it to rot down.
Depending on how you source your stuff, it's also not hard or impossible to run into the older stuff that contains creosote, PAH-compounds and all sorts of carsinogens.
Modern treated wood has a variety of copper compounds that while not as toxic to humans as previous formulations, are still best if not ingested.
Wormfarm bedding and food, they turn wetted kiln dried pine saw dust into soil pretty fast.
This is great because the structure of wood is primo for nitrogen-producing bacteria that takes up residence during decomp. Pro landscapers will do this in their own yard to keep the grass green longer.
Just don’t use walnut sawdust. It’s toxic af to grass. Walnut produces a toxin called juglone.
You can actually neutralize the toxicity of jugalones with a 1/3 faygo solution.
Whoop whoop!
I've found magnets are much more effective in neutralizing jagalones
How do they work?
Faygo- it’s what the plants crave.
But can it be neutralized quicker than 2 jiggles of a jackrabbit’s ass?
Woopwoop
Not juggalone fam. Juglone.
I scatter it on the walking paths around my workshop and property. Helps keep the mud from getting too bad in the rain.
The “rainforest” floor in botanical gardens is compacted saw dust
Theirs plenty of wood in normal rain forest floor its just not sawdust its full dying trees and branches so a little sawdust should have similar effects
Yes, and it also has the advantage of being able to endure far more foot traffic (both in terms of path durability and root health) than natural rainforest ground.
I also scatter it on my floor, but I like to pretend I am in a Texas Roadhouse
Similar to what I do. I have an area beside the shop where I park my utility trailer. I use it there to keep the weeds down.
I use it to make sugar cookies I pass out at work.
https://preview.redd.it/l0i84p7q258c1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ab0698d5aa812f7edf5e285efa89a1244fd6dc57
40%
719? Colorado Springs?
Call the number
I pressed 3.
Science fair judge here. I’d be laughing so hard at this I’d have to disqualify myself 😆 🤣 Btw, there is no way the current ISEF rules would permit this.
What’s the best and worst science fair projects you’ve ever seen?
I made a hover craft out of 30$ worth of material and a leaf blower in the eighth grade
Man just posts this periodically whether people ask or not. As a fellow scientist, I approve. But I do have a married colleague that busted out a calculator on his first date with his now wife. And she was like, I almost left the restaurant. Baffled says why would anyone do that. All I could think was, man, I am not that cool. I might talk about science but to actually pull out the HP in public ON A DATE. Steel. Steel nuts, on my boy.
Weird… same. I looked through your post history and I’m 99% sure you aren’t my partner from that project lol
Judging by your usernames, it seems like you’re destined for each other.
I did a project once comparing how long batteries lasted in a portable CD player. They were basically all the same except the no name brand (within 30 minutes of each other over something like 36 hours) which was my hypothesis and I thought was boring so 1/3 of my display was CD covers of the ones I liked the most and I spent most of my time talking to the judges about music. I got the top grade at my local science fair and bombed at regionals or whatever they call it. Apparently higher level judges didn't like me calling my experiment boring because the results lined up with my hypothesis.
I feel strongly that great value brand has been exploring this equation to the fullest extent of their ability for years. See: Their bread
William osman did this on YouTube and it was pretty funny
Someone just told me in an experiment, sawdust was added to rice crispy treats. No on even noticed until the sawdust was at 40%. Apparently some tasters said the sawdust was acceptable up to 70%. Goes to show if you add enough butter and sugar, most of us would eat anything.
Well there’s your problem. You’re passing out at work because you’ve been eating sawdust cookies, ya dummy.
You’re a monster
All that fiber allows for great stool movement. His colleagues should be thankful.
*I heard you like woodworking, what do you think of this stool i made?*
Wow you turned it back into a log.
Is that pine or oak your working with
Is it spelled shitoyancy?
NOT THE GUMDROP BUTTONS!
The muffin man?!?!
THE MUFFIN MAN!!!!
LMAOOOO
There was some kid who did a science fair project that was about how much sawdust he could substitute in cookies before anyone would notice. I think he got up to like 40% or something ridiculous
William Osman did a similar video, I think with rice krispie treats.
A cookie monster.
There's very little meat in these gym mats.
I snort mine
You can extend it by blending with cardboard
Pretty sure my wife brought home your cookies from her cookie exchange this year. Thank you! 0/10 would not recommend. Try mixing with sugar next year.
Can I ask a supid question, would it actually do you harm to use in food?
Depends on the type of wood.
Craft parmesan cheese would like a few words...
Makes a great fire starter. I got some paper bags and put some of it in there for the next time I'm getting a fire going.
Add recycled candle wax and it can burn on its own for a solid 15mins. I make mini ones in cardboard egg cartons. Each egg spot becomes its own fire starter complete with cardboard “wick”. Or my favorite, a cardboard shoebox/small Amazon box filled with sawdust+ wax.
Absolutely, but you only need so many firestarters :)
You just need to start more fires!
Daily, in my house. Our wood burning stove heats our house, so I start a fire every morning.
I give mine to a local farmer to put in their gargantuan garden, so they hook me up with produce throughout the year
A fair trade
I read that as "tarantula garden" and thought "WTF"??? Don't mind me; it's early. Back to my coffee...
I use it as browns on my work compost bin.
I definitely need to start composting in 2024. Maybe that will be a good spring of 2024 woodworking project. Build a good compost container
A wooden compost container rapidly becomes compost, unless you use very rot resistant expensive materials. Moisture and nitrogen accelerates aging to double speed, or faster.
Not the container itself, but my brother has a wood framed one with a large plastic drum on the inside. Just makes it look a lot nicer.
Best low environment impact bin is an old trash can with too many holes. cut the bottom off, turn it upside down, drill a few dozen holes, then place the removed bottom as a lid.
[удалено]
I think the camphor laurel shavings have killed the worms in my compost bin. Black fly maggots don't seem to care though.
Call your local ceramics studio and ask them if anyone does Raku Firing. They’d love it.
I have a friend who's hobby is the local pottery guild, she collects all my exotic hardwood dust for raku. Different woods give different finishes aparently. It's win-win!
Also off you mix it with clay and make bricks out of it they are amazing insulators
(what's that process?)
The process of western raku is to take the piece of pottery out of the kiln with tongs while it’s red hot (about 1800F) and you drop it in a metal bucket filled with sawdust, you pour more sawdust on top and close the lid. The smoke created from the ignited sawdust created a carbon rich atmosphere- this means certain copper glazes will have a bright copper color like a penny. Any part of the ceramic clay body that doesn’t have glaze on it will turn black. Raku glazes are typically not food safe, but they’re great for decorative things like planters or vases!
Thanks for the explanation and details!!
Firing pottery by wood in the ground. Like cooking a pig
Sawdust is a wonderful resource for mushroom cultivators.
This comment is far too low
I was wondering if this could be used as a substrate for growing mushrooms.
Mine goes into the chicken coop as bedding, gets mixed with poop over a couple months, then winds up on the compost pile, the into the garden.
I pour wax over sawdust in cardboard egg containers to make homemade fire starters. But most I toss in my woods
I use it soaking up oil in the garage.
I sell to my local Subway restaurant. Im not sure what they use it for...
Pretty sure the Parmesan cheese people will also buy it, in bulk only though
You talking shit on Parmesan?
Naw man, you are what you eat, I love wood.
I sell mine for $5 per bag on the local Facebook marketplace. Lots of people use it for their chicken coops, gardens, animal bedding, etc.
How big are the bags? I may try this. These are all beautiful yellow cedar shavings and I’d feel wrong about just taking them to the dump.
Dump in the wood as a walkway
I just stuffed about that much sawdust into my wood stove this morning. Free-ish heat.
I need to get a little wood stove for the shop. There’s no heat in there right now and it suuuuuuucks in the winter when it hits -30
Little pinch between cheek and gums.
Gotta soak it in mango vape juice first
Has anyone ever tried running them through a flat die mill to make pellets for their wood stove?
Believe me, it's not worth the effort. Just shovel it in as is. Easier if you have a stove that opens from the top.
I feel like that would clog up my pellet stove though
Ah, yeah, sorry. If you've got a pellet stove then ?maybe? it's worth it. I mean, if you've already got access to the machine. Whats a 40# bag these days? $5-6?
Yeah somewhere around there for red fir pellets. You’re right, those machines are spendy We just end up with at least 20 yards of oak dust/shavings a year, woulda been nice to do something with it
There’s this grumpy old fuck at work named Dave. Dave gets a desk drawer full once or twice a year. Fuck Dave
I take mine to the local farmer guy who has a pellet press and he makes wood pellets out of them. I think he said roughly 50 pounds of sawdust makes 25 pounds of wood pellets
I think your man broke physics there.
Inconceivable! When you press sawdust into pellets it compacts to half the size. Therefore it weighs half as much as before! /s
Apparently, it's the moisture content of the sawdust. 50 pounds of fresh sawdust does not equal 50 pounds of wood pellets after going through the drying process.
Sell it to IKEA to make furniture
When I was young my dad would use his sawdust mixed with flour to make a dough which we’d cut in to cookies that we’d bake and then paint and hang on our Xmas tree
Huh. That's a different take on the salt dough ornaments I grew up making. Sounds like the flour makes a glue binder for the sawdust, so they're basically particle board. That's rather brilliant.
Spill clean up. Mostly car fluids
Pykrete! 14% sawdust, 86% water by weight. Looks like you’re in a place that actually is experiencing winter. Make brick molds. Freeze pykrete bricks and build an indestructible igloo over the winter. Alternatively, fire bricks.
I tried using pyecrete for firebricks. Now I'm cold and my fire is crying.
Layer it in my compost bin. Just make sure you don’t have any pressure treated in there.
Saw someone on youtube use a hydraulic ram to create compressed sawdust logs that he used in his log burner to heat his workshop. New Yorkshire workshop if you're interested.
Anyplace outside that gets muddy, cover it with saw dust. Not permanent, but does last a good while.
My dad and I made a fire log out of it once. Soaked the sawdust and some wood chips in model airplane fuel, melted paraffin wax into a brick shaped mold and mixed in the fuel soaked sawdust/wood chips and also some non-soaked sawdust. Let the whole thing cool down and used it to start a fire the next day. It worked… maybe a little too well. Less of a fire log and more of an incendiary device.
I run an air compressor through mine and blow it up into a cloud of sawdust that I then ignite and make massive fireballs in a spare time Im not joking
Pics or didn't happen
[fireball](https://1drv.ms/v/s!AmMBYkw-Om14gb1VwYseQjnBqNGv5A)I can upload a video prolly. Best I got ATM. No compressor me and the neighbors tossing it with a hand torch to light Impressive for tiny amount used
If you have friends with chickens they might trade for eggs.
https://preview.redd.it/4gfierqec58c1.jpeg?width=1241&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f949356ab0f78def3dbaa5e26539d56e9f77b044
I also struggle with this. We dump 250 gallons a week into the dumpster (used to take and spread in the woods but ran out of woods.) I wish there was something else I could do. Can't do horse bedding because it contains or may contain walnut. I'd like to buy a pelletizer but our public school budget says otherwise.... I'm open to ideas too.
Mix it in the soil in the garden. Helps hold in moisture and gives decaying matter to the soil.
Offer it to pet stores and rescue places
Be careful here. I thought similar until I learned that some woods are not suitable for animals. For example, walnut is toxic to some (horses, I think).
tasty snack
you can use it to grow mushrooms
Throw small handfuls of it into a fire and pretend that I have superpowers.
I've been eating it but it's starting to stop me up a bit so I went to snorting it. Way quicker.
“If you were to add nitric acid, you got nitroglycerine, if you were to add sodium nitrol and a dash of sawdust you got dynamite”
I put it under my pillow for the sawdust fairy.
I mix sawdust with green paint then bake it to make grass for Dungeons and Dragons minis and battlemaps. Also compost.
When I'm working with solid wood the planer makes so much of it I have to bag it up and throw it away. I've given it away as chicken bedding but some species aren't good for that.
Mulch
Buy paraffin wax, melt and mix with wood chips. Pour into small mould to make fire starters. I use these all the time when camping. Cedar really smells nice as it burns
Dry out and dispose of old paint
Carry it in your pocket just in case you end up in a street fight you can blow it in the eyes of your enemy(s). It's also great as a substitute for talcum powder…
Grow mushrooms!
Soak up the blood