pellet making

me and a few friends have been thinking about that idea over the past few months, we may all pitch in & buy one next spring.

20 hours to make a ton???? You don't value your time very much do you? You will in essence, be making less than minimum wage. Just bite the bullet and buy your pellets, they aren't that expensive. Bubble

there is a lot more to making pellets that just running sawdust into a die.
you have to dry the material
you have to separate any metal if any from the raw material
most of the time you will need to grind or hammer mill down your raw material to make it small enough to run through a die.
you have to shake out the fines
you have to bag them and seal them

and ya 20 hours to make 50 buck. No thanks
there is a video here that shows how pellets are made

I agree with hearthtools. The moisture content of the raw material is VERY critical to good pellets. You also have to add a binder to the mix (think cement mixer needed too) to get the pellets nice and hard. Go to www.makeyourownpellets.com and read the comments on the forum to get some idea of what's required. Don't use his prices as a guideline because he's about 400% higher than what you can buy the equipment yourself from China delivered to your door.

tjnamtiw said:

I agree with hearthtools. The moisture content of the raw material is VERY critical to good pellets. You also have to add a binder to the mix (think cement mixer needed too) to get the pellets nice and hard. Go to www.makeyourownpellets.com and read the comments on the forum to get some idea of what's required. Don't use his prices as a guideline because he's about 400% higher than what you can buy the equipment yourself from China delivered to your door.

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For premium pellet BINDERS are not added. they are 100% sawdust. the compression alone is what holds them in a pellet form.

Exactly! In large operations enough heat is generated or added during the pellet formation to release the lignens that bind the pellets together. In the small 'home' machines, not enough heat is generated to bind them sufficiently so you have to add a corn starch type binder to the mix. It is available commercially for those people.

Are you kidding, half the professional pellet makers can't make a decent pellet. :lol: .
Mike -

I am going to get a little lathe or a sharp carving knife and whittle and turn my own pellets. I figure it will take me a month to make a bag but I'll be saving money!

The logic in this thread escapes me. If you love woodworking so much, make any product.....rocking horses, picture frames, wooden toys etc., you can sell them and make far more than the cost of a ton of pellets in far less than twenty hours/ton. It is also more enjoyable. Just sayin, but it's your time, if you want to waste it on an inferior product, go for it.

ffspeed said:

Maybe I am missing the point, but I am sure I am not the only one. I love power tools and machine, and I have a whole garage full to prove it. And there are a lot of things I like to do my self. I like working with wood, and metal, and yes some of things I have made, I could have gone out and bought cheaper. But it isn't the same, I made it my self. Some times you need to spend a little extra to save a little extra. I am not looking to make grade A pellets, just burnable one, without to much ash. It will give me another toy to play with, and at the same time save money. I have a lot of saw dust, wood chip and scrapes to get rid of from my wood working, which I have to pay to dump, $80.00 a yard is the going rate right now. I could turn that in to pellets, for the cost of a dollar and hour for diesel, instead of $80.00 a yard to dump. And I am due to retire soon, and 20 hrs and ton will keep me busy, off the couch, and out of my wife way, and not helping to fill up the local land fill, since they closed down the steam plant that use to burn the wood.

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If U in Rome Y not save $80/yard and send wood waste to biomass power plant in Sara Cuse for free or MayB even get paid. Then use procedes or savings 2 buy pellets. Then use 20 hours to make $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ doin other chit!

ffspeed said:

Maybe I am missing the point, but I am sure I am not the only one. I love power tools and machine, and I have a whole garage full to prove it. And there are a lot of things I like to do my self. I like working with wood, and metal, and yes some of things I have made, I could have gone out and bought cheaper. But it isn't the same, I made it my self. Some times you need to spend a little extra to save a little extra. I am not looking to make grade A pellets, just burnable one, without to much ash. It will give me another toy to play with, and at the same time save money. I have a lot of saw dust, wood chip and scrapes to get rid of from my wood working, which I have to pay to dump, $80.00 a yard is the going rate right now. I could turn that in to pellets, for the cost of a dollar and hour for diesel, instead of $80.00 a yard to dump. And I am due to retire soon, and 20 hrs and ton will keep me busy, off the couch, and out of my wife way, and not helping to fill up the local land fill, since they closed down the steam plant that use to burn the wood.

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Don't take this the wrong way, I am not being sarcastic or derogatory, but if you are good with tools, metal and understand wood bi-products, you may do better making a stove you can utilize the raw materials direct. If you really have some money and time to invest, work on a wood-scrap stove. For years I searched for one to feed instead of the dumpster. A fellow woodworker had one in his shop. A scoop and a 55 gallon drum were his stove accessories. He bought his stove from the maker in Tennessee, and sold them for about three years until the company closed. Not the most efficient, but an interesting burner. Not unlike a pellet stove, but the fuel hopper was a live hopper, it did catch sometimes, and became part of the fire box. It had no electrical hook up and was all gravity and confection fed. It could be significantly improved upon.

Few may recognize Orley J. Milligan, but check out his work with wood and pellet stoves. Patents don't come cheap. His designs are different, but he was able to achieve near EPA clean burning without the whistles and bells. You could do the same.

I don't show my stoves or talk much about them. That gives me the ability to be an equal opportunity critic of all stoves. I will tell you one stove I have taken from location to location. It's a model Mountain Goat, by BigHorn fabrications. I would stake it up against most newer stoves for efficiency and quality of burn. Terry made four stoves he didn't cut apart, I have one the other three are in the family. He liked tinkering and he liked woodstoves and heating in the Winter. He didn't write things down, and his designs are lost. He had a sense of what to do, he was the first to encourage me to tweak the controls, "Never settle on what the book says!"

The energy you put into a cheap made in China mill could go into something even you could be proud of. Corrie who has slipped into the woodwork posted all the time about his excitment about making stoves....... I miss the kid on the forums, but he was one of those like Terry and Orley, Dane and others... Think you might like to join the crowd?