burning shavings

[martin baker]

​Hi wood friends , last year I put out a question about , how to burn wood shavings in a wood stove, some replies from "fill a plastic bag & burn", not very environmentally friendly! to the other end of the scale, "not worth the effort" as one not to give up easy, I have found a solution that suits me, I came across a cardboard tube used for textiles & paper etc, this I cut to a length to fit my stove , fill with wood shavings & small unusable off cuts , ram tight & it burns like a log, very pleased with the outcome, not too much prep & a rewarding BTU return. Tubes are easy to find outside floor coverings shops on rubbish collection days. Good luck, Martin.

[Steve Peterson]

I have seen posts where they wet the sawdust so it can be packed much tighter. You have to wait for it to dry, but it is supposed to burn better.

Steve

[Kevin Bourque]

I just sweep it off the floor and throw it in the stove. Didn't realize there was a high tech alternative. :)

[Mark Bolton]

I'm with Kevin, we just shovel ours straight into the stove. Best to mix some scraps in too but in the winter we burn a large percentage of our chips. In summer they go to horse people or piled outside and burned.

Only thing to watch with shoveling is if you have fine sanding dust you can get some nasty flare ups.

[Tom Fischer]

I burn all the jointer and planer shavings, just shovel them in, or great just for starting wood fires.
Finer stuff (Sawdust from the cabinet saw or sanders) goes out in the woods.

[Jim Matthews]

Fine sawdust from a dust collection system should not be thrown into an open flame.

It's explosive. The packed sawdust bricks (EnviBlock and Bio Brick) are compressed under tremendous pressure.
The lignin remaining in the sawdust glues the loose material into a tight package.


http://vimeo.com/260680

[Kevin Bourque]

Thats one way to remove creosote from the chimney.

[Steve Meliza]

Something tells me that burning the glue in the cardboard tube is no better than a plastic bag.

[Jim Matthews]

Thats one way to remove creosote from the chimney.

More to the point,

"That's one way to remove... the chimney."

[Mark Bolton]

Fine sawdust from a dust collection system should not be thrown into an open flame.

It's explosive. The packed sawdust bricks (EnviBlock and Bio Brick) are compressed under tremendous pressure.
The lignin remaining in the sawdust glues the loose material into a tight package.


http://vimeo.com/260680

Hence "nasty flare ups". We burn every but of it in the winter. If you use a little common sense and perhaps even better find/make a shovel that fits perfectly through your stoves door you can simply put the shovel full in and push it off with a pusher.

Works like a charm and never a flare up unless some ninnie opts to try to toss a shovel full in. If the pile is kept dense it's very tough to burn. Just try lighting a pile of fine dust, nearly impossible.

[martin baker]

Of course I have tried this at first, but there is a danger element, plus somehow it doesn't burn correctly, it smolders, I have run test checking in the firebox & outside chimney, so unless you throw in a little at a time it will give off too much smoke ~= not burning correctly, the cardboard tube system allows it to burn like a log.

[Mark Bolton]

I'm sure a lot of it depends on your stove, how you burn your stove, and what you burn.

At home I burn the stove conventionally with dry hardwood, slow simmering fire, fast hot fires in the morning to clear the chimney. At home however my stove only intakes air through the door and not from below the coal bed.

At the shop however we use an old stove which brings the combustion air up through the coal bed and are burning a lot of scraps and chips that are far dryer than any firewood. We usually treat the stove a bit more like a coal stove getting a nice hot bed of coals and piling chips probably 8-10" thick on top mixed with scraps. Occasionally we stick in some conventional firewood just to keep the burn a bit slower.

I have burned most of our chips in average work flow this way. If we are very busy or doing a lot of planing I can't keep up with the stove and they go outside to be burned or to the horse people.

If your a recycler you could easy pack anything combustible ( cardboard boxes, paper bags, shoe boxes) full of chips and stick them in. There are always boxes around the shop we don't save for reuse (beer boxes come to mind) and they always get scooped full of chips and into the stove. It's work but at least we get some fuel savings out of the expensive chips.

[martin baker]

Your right, different stove, different burn. As for burning beer boxes etc, we have a collection system for cardboard to be recycled, + I don't like to burn anything with too much print especially colored print, my main goal is a method to burn efficiency wood shaving mainly from lathe work, & for my stove (a jotul 118) the tube system works great. For your shop stove try first to place a tube/stove pipe upright in the middle of the stove , now you can pack shavings etc around ,pack it down, & remove the tube & light . Good luck.PS check "saw dust stove" on you tube.

[Mark Bolton]

I have long wanted to build that stove but haven't had the time.

Agreed about the print. We have no collection here and my guess is though whatever is in the ink may be an issue, when we factor the cost of trucking nearly any recyclables the hundreds, if not thousands, of miles they are to be recycled, nearly any point of use manner of dealing with them is either a gain or at the least makes it a wash.

Unfortunately the current shop stove is a side load so the vertical tube is out but if I ever get around to building a sawdust stove I'll surely post. If we could efficiently burn chips it may even make it cost effective to implement some exterior storage for winter months.

I don't see a grinder and block maker in the future for the shop so the sawdust stove seems a good alternative.

[Jim Koepke]

I tend to catch shavings and small scraps in a box at the end of the bench. These are used for starting fires instead of paper. A fluffy pile of shavings can make a hot fire real fast. The ones that have been on the floor and stepped on awhile tend to get packed tight and don't burn as fast.

A plastic snow shovel is good for picking up shavings if you are worried about sparks on a concrete floor.

jtk