|
The group of woodworkers over at Sawmillcreek.org started a thread listing the many ways to recycle sawdust. According to Greg Cole, wood mills used to give it away for free but now the mill sawdust is used to make pellets for pellet stoves.
 Here's the list compiled by the authors:
1. Mulching out weeds in the backyard.
2. Give it away for rabbit, hampster, etc cages.
3. Make firestarters (just grab an old egg carton - the paper kind, fill each section with sawdust, melt wax, pour wax into each section, (be careful with the hot wax),then rip one off when you need it.
4. Soak up dripping fluids in a garage.
5. It can also go into compost piles. It balances the green stuff like grass trimmings. I bag it in 40 gal trash bags and give it to gardeners. (BUT:walnut sawdust is bad for your plants because walnuts and other members of the same family (butternut, hickory, etc.) produce a toxin in their leaves, roots and bark that's designed to kill off other vegetation around them. The toxin is called "juglone" and it's basically a way for walnuts to ensure they have less competition for light, nutrients, etc. The theory is that if you put fresh walnut shavings in your garden some of the toxin can leach down into your soil and kill your plants. However, not all plants are susceptible to it and theoretically the wood itself doesn't contain nearly as much of the toxin as the other parts of the tree.)
6. Someone with livestock might be willing to take it off your hands (BUT:The dust from a hobby shop is not the same as shavings from an industrial mill. The hobby shop saw dust is fine enough to harm the animals. Shavings are fairly large.)
7. Hank Phillips has used oak sawdust in the smoker when I ran out of wood chips and was too, uh, busy to go get more. He moistened a few heaping handfuls with some beer, and threw a clump or two in when it needed it.
8. The 'Furniture Guys' used shavings to rub down furniture when cleaning the finish with Napha. IIRC, they liked it better than steel wool because it would remove the finish without scratching the wood underneath.
9. Mark Page: "I have a high composition of clay in the soil here, that's why it's Clay county here in Missouri. Sawdust first goes into the flower beds and garden. Any left gets sprinkled into the lawn. Another note that I follow and I guess it is right, is that sawdust takes nitrogen out of the soil to decompose, so you have to supplement with nitrogen fertilizer."
10. Evidently there is a kind of pottery called Raku. What they do is fill a steel garbage can with sawdust and newspaper. Then they take the pottery out of the kiln and put it into the sawdust while it is still red hot. It is pretty cool when the put the 1500 degree pottery into the sawdust - talk about a quick way to light a fire! Somehow the interaction with the sawdust makes a neat finish for the pottery.
11. John Bailey: "I save my bandsaw dust to use as epoxy filler. Dust from the random orbital sander is good also."
and not so good, #12. "A number of years ago I went on a tour of Winnebago Industries in Forest City Iowa (in fact I went a few times while waiting for service on my RV). The tour included the cabinet shops where large amounts of Sawdust was produced most from MDF, particle board or plywood the same material any cabinet shop would produce. Their dust and scrap collection was impressive. Piles upon piles were left outside. It was explained that Pig Farmers would take all they could as Food for their pigs. I questioned the composition of the waste and was told that since the company was formed in the 50s, this was how they disposed of their sawdust."
Click here for a link to an informative article about using sawdust as a biofuel.
Newer news items:
Older news items:
Trackback(0)
 |
TrackBack URI for this entry
