I am wondering if anyone has an experience or knowledge of a wood burner that burns wood shavings/sawdust. I have an acquaintance who has an automatic lathe and he makes drumsticks. From kiln dried hickory. And he makes a lot of shavings. so even though we do not have a lot of heating days here in Louisiana, he would like to burn some of his waste.
But all attempts to turn these shavings into BTUs have not turned into success yet.
Not a solution to your problem, but I find a modest sized paper bag filled with shavings makes excellent kindle, especially with wood fragments from the circular saw that cut the logs to shape.
I remember one from a wood working magazine from some years back. They would pack a 55 gallon drum full. There were holes drilled in the side, maybe 1 inch diameter, and a hole pushed into the center with a pipe. Light from the bottom. The shavings do make for a great starter, but you have to stir them if you want them to burn for any time period.
Package them and sell them for high dollars to BBQ folks. Throw a handful of damp shavings on the coals. They even work with gas grills, soaked and placed in a foil packet with holes punched in it and set on the hottest part of the grill.
Back in my youth, I grew up on a farm and one of the crop was dark fired tobacco. My grand father cured it hanging in barns with open fires on the dirt floor. He started with logs that woudl burn for hours and produce flame, smoke and heat. At the end he switched to hickory saw dust which smoldered and produce very little heat, but lots of smoke. He gauged his fires with a thermometer hanging about as high as he could reach. When he had finally driven the moisture out of the the tobacco, the temperature would rise drastically and quickly. That's when he switched to the saw dust.
I think you woudl have to figure out a way to roll your own logs or compact your own pellets to get a good fire out of shavings. Or have a stove that could blow air through them.
Were it me, I'd try dampening the shavings and rolling them tightly in several sheets of newspaper to make a log. Then I'd let them dry and try them out. Fortunately, with standing dead and downed trees I have more wood than I can burn. I use my shavings for insulation on the floor (dirt floor in an old barn).
I use shavings in my smoker for my bees. Work great for that. Never tried to burn them for heat as I have 120 acres of hardwood forest that supplies me with all the wood I need.
I had a friend who built an auger type delivery system that moved the sawdust down to the stove and then a custom blower that blew the dust into the stove. Seemed to work really well and burned extremely hot. Not sure if it every had problems. I've lost touch with him since we both retired. He was a mechanical genius. I think he had adjustments on it for speed of both the auger and the blower and knowing him he was probably always tinkering with it.
I've heated this shop with wood since 1093, and previous others since the late sixties. Back in one of the earlier shops around 1970, I was sharing shop space with 3 other woodworkers. The stove had a cast iron top and bottom, with sheet metal sides, so you loaded it through a door in the top.
The shop was the top floor of a big warehouse, with open rafters and high ceiling, so pretty hard to heat. One cold morning we all got there early, and one of the young fellows brought a big box of sawdust from under a table saw over, and dumped it down on top of a bed of hot coals.
We were all huddled around close while the coals cooked the VOC's out of the dust until it combusted. That cast iron lid hit the ceiling about 16' up, as we scattered like a covey of quails. I would hate to think what would have happened if the lid had been latched. It didn't need a latch, since gravity kept it down until that time. Otherwise, I'm sure it would have blown the sides out. We were darn lucky it didn't burn that old building down.
I may use some of my turning curls in my stove, but I always make sure there is a flame going, and not smother it.
Thank you all who responded to my inquiry. Don't know what my friend will choose to do, but getting info from this great range of folks has been helpful.
I went to a carpet store and got cardboard tubes. cut them to length for my furnace, put newspaper in one end, jammed in the sawdust and another piece of newspaper to seal it up. Throw them right into the wood furnace.
A friend used to own an oil undercoating business***, and after reclaiming as much of the dripping oil as he could, he rolled the cars and trucks over an area with about 8" of sawdust and shavings from a sawmill; below that, sand. At the end of the week (or every few days when busy) he'd rake up the shavings, and put them in small paper bags, or fill paper grocery bags about 1/4 full, and roll them up tight. These he stacked up for use in the stove.
He'd get a good fire going with wood, then he could toss in 1-2 bags at a time, and they'd burn well. He treated them just about like small logs. Too many bags, and it would smoulder. You want the flame to burn through each bag, and not have the stuff spill out and choke up the fire.
He used very little cordwood, and could get about 3/4 of his daytime heat from these bags of shavings/sawdust. Probably not a great idea to burn all that oil along with the wood, but that was 20 years ago.
Safe spinning,
Brad Vietje
Newbury, VT
*** y'all in the South may not know about this -- you coat all the exposed metal under the car/truck with thick, sticky oil to prevent rust from all the salt put on the roads to melt ice in winter...
My old S10 (1990) had a coating of what appeared to be wax on the frame (factory stock). Not sure what it really was, but it sure felt like wax. No salt to speak of down here...which is ok! Not sure if the replacement 2001 S10 has it or not. I'm curious now so I'll try and remember to check. What are fake logs made of? Some sort of parafin and sawdust?
Some of the factory-applied undercoating is like the old "Rusty Jones" method -- a spray-on rubbery material sorta like a truck bed liner -- which in a cold, salty environment can do MUCH more harm than good, oddly enough. The material gets brittle over time (and can chip/crack when well below zzzzero F), and then traps the salty brine up against the frame and keeps it there. Can be hard to remove the salt even if you go to a car wash with a good under-body wash.
Newer coatings are very soft and gummy, which is what you want up here. Otherwise, oil undercoating is the best way to make vehicles last. My buddy used to do all the school buses in the area and all the municipal trucks for highway, fire, rescue, etc... for a dozen or more towns & cities. Municipal trucks made up almost half his income before he got out of that business. The EPA helped him get out of the business, too (along with spine problems), because his dad, who started the business after WWII, used to just let all the oil drip onto the ground, which in time polluted a nearby stream, etc... His dad, a pretty short rugged fellow, also built the "pit" below the cars about a foot too shallow, causing my friend's back & neck problems. Well, you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your family!
