After sawing up some 4 foot lenghts of seasoned oak and ending up with a barrel of oak saw dust,it seemed a shame to just throw it out when this by product is used to make wood pellets and biobricks.Anyone know of a way to process this saw dust into wood pellets or biobricks?
Sawdust
- Thread starter Rich L
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Rich L said:
I guess it depends on how you "sawed" them....
Using a chainsaw, that spits bar oil onto the wood shavings.... I'd be reluctant to put that anywhere near my stove. Don't need things to get that hot if you know what I mean?
If you create a fluidized bed by pumping air from the bottom, you can burn a lot of dust quickly. I've seen home-made sawdust burning devices that basically entrain the sawdust in a good airflow- once you have a high surface area fuel suspended in air- you can ignite it (think about a controled grain elevator explosion). Be careful with this stuff- it can go up quick. My brother throws handfulls into the top of his Chiminea and creates small mushroom clouds- WOOSH!
There are other things you can do with sawdust too. You can compost it for gardening, or use it as mulch. It is also valuable to a hobbyist mushroom grower for woodloving species. If you lived anywhere near me I'd love to have your oak sawdust for mushroom growing (I grow the legal kind! haha). Of course I wouldn't want it for any gardening/mulching/composting purpose unless you used a vegetable based bar oil (like the one Husqvarna sells).
Since we cut off and on year round I just leave the sawdust in place...or if anything I'll move it to a new staging area. I find it to be a good medium to cut on when bucking...it protect the saw tips and it's nice to take a knee on. Eventually though no matter how thick it gets...one day it's just gone.
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