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Making fire logs from shavings and chips

Actually here's a pretty good idea with 35 years worth of testing. Also from 2011 a bumper year for compressed woodchip logs

Make your own pressed logs?

I've read about others trying to make their own pressed logs and was wondering if anyone here has tried it. I can end up with over 100 gallons of shavings and dust in a month easily and was thinking I could turn this into logs instead of just dumping them in the compost. I figured if I use...
familywoodworking.org familywoodworking.org
I wonder if a compressed log might burn better though.
 
Interesting thought. I go the other way, from fire logs *to* shavings and chips.
I did have someone suggest that I look into getting a pellet press. Feeding it waste wood, one can make their own pelletized fuel for a stove. I used to buy pellets by the ton, (50 bags x 40 pounds on a pallet) but now I'm trying a mini split this year.
 
I don't do it, but when I taught a college woodworking program I toured a number of plants that made briquettes or pellets from waste. Briquettes are MUCH easier, but I have seen a lot of small pellet mills working successfully. No binder needed, just pressure. I wanted to install a small briquette system for my campus.... we had a cabinetmaking and a carpentry program, plus work within the the building generated wood waste. They can be had to make logs, bricks, or pucks. The program closed ten years ago; at the time I think the ones I was looking at where in the $10-20K CDN range, but they make them smaller than that.
 
Well, you must be very efficient Richard. I create a ton of shavings every time I turn a bowl. I mean I'm not trying to go into the log business. I'm just trying to get rid of my mess. Furthermore, I live in Texas, so I'm not gonna need that many :).
Adrian, that sounds pretty cool. I wonder if there is some way to get some moderate amount of compression from ... a compressor :). I don't think I'll be picking up one of the production machines.
Thanks
 
Ok, I think I got a plan. 4" pvc with holes drilled all in it. 3" piece of pvc to use to push a plate of some sort down. Then Build a little frame out of 2x4s to hold it and apply pressure using a 1 ton bottle jack. In my head it is already working great. But I haven't gotten out of my seat yet.
I have more confidence in the above then I do in the woodchip mixture. I imagine that will take some iteration.
I'll report back when I'm swimming in woodchip logs.
 
Maybe, or maybe iron pipe, but drilling holes in that would be a pain. I'll probably start with pvc until, as you suggest it explodes, then move on to iron pipe.
 
Raif Harik said:
Maybe, or maybe iron pipe, but drilling holes in that would be a pain. I'll probably start with pvc until, as you suggest it explodes, then move on to iron pipe.
Click to expand...
What are the holes for?

I can pretty much guarantee PVC won't work. At minimum, I would be thinking about steel pipe or square channel, and a hydraulic press or a much bigger jack. I have two 20 ton bottle jacks, but I would be thinking of something like this..... only 12 ton, but there's a frame. They make them bigger. press

33497_W3.jpg

If you look at the commercial ones, there are something like burn marks on the outside surfaces. It takes a hell of a lot of compression to make this work.
 
To get the curls to remain in any kind of shape, You need so much pressure that the curls warm up and stick together. Either that or you spray resin on the curls and that heats up enough to stick. Making briquettes or logs is not as simple as just smashing.
I am very efficient Raif, I core every bowl blank I put on the lathe. Small bowls sell the best for me at the holiday show. I sell them as jewelry holders and women can see a use for them right away.
You don't have to invent the press, just watch YouTube after searching DIY Sawdust briquettes
 
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Raif Harik said:
Hi does anyone compress their shavings and sawdust etc into logs/bricks for the fire? I found this thread here from 2011 that is interesting. I was just wondering if anyone was actively doing it and if so if they'd share their setup.

Turning woodworking dust and chips into burnable "logs"

Turning woodworking dust and chips into burnable "logs"
www.festoolownersgroup.com
Thanks
R
Click to expand...
Raif,
I'm afraid you've got it all backwards. In woodturning, after you throw out the shavings and sawdust, what you have LEFT goes in the fireplace. ;)
 
Richard Coers said:
To get the curls to remain in any kind of shape, You need so much pressure that the curls warm up and stick together. Either that or you spray resin on the curls and that heats up enough to stick. Making briquettes or logs is not as simple as just smashing.
I am very efficient Raif, I core every bowl blank I put on the lathe. Small bowls sell the best for me at the holiday show. I sell them as jewelry holders and women can see a use for them right away.
You don't have to invent the press, just watch YouTube after searching DIY Sawdust briquettes
Click to expand...
It's been ten years since I thought about this stuff; the burn marks are friction burns. Unless you are making one at a time, the steel channel (of whatever shape) acts as a die, and you are compressing the brick, then pushing it through the die, and yeah there is a lot of heat developed.

Some systems use waxed paper, like from cartons,in the mix, but the better way has none. If I was going to DIY this, I would set aside a fair bit of research time. Like you say, much more involved than at first glance.
 
I thought about making smoker pellets from chips. From what I read you can do it with a hydraulic press. Probably a much smaller setup than what is required for logs.
 
hockenbery said:
I don’t have good mental picture of where the pressure is but
Sched 80 PVC 4” pipe has a max psi 320 and 3” max psi of 370
Abrasion in use will reduce those Psi over time.

Be safe
Click to expand...
In one of the youtube videos, one guy using a hydraulic press shows his 1/4" wall steel tubing flared out from the ram pressure. That takes PVC out of the running. Plus the plug of sawdust has to be pressed out of the pipe. Takes several minutes of pumping the hydraulic jack to compress the sawdust and minutes of pumping to drive the plug out. Also watch how many pumps he has to make on that press. If you do that very long, I bet you have to change arms often. All those DIY videos show a process that is incredibly time consuming. You may get rid of chips and curls, but you'll not get it done quickly.
 
I heat my 30' x 40' shop with a floor heat electric boiler to about 40 degrees F then when I go out to work I start a fire in a small wood burning furnace and after I get some coals from fire wood I throw in shavings in plastic bags left from any purchases I have made. The woodturning shavings I don't try to catch because the best place to suck them up is about sternum level and that would interfere with turning. The shavings from green wood turning I just spread out on an open part of the floor where they dry in a day or 2 and then can be bagged and burned. The idea of compressing using a bottle jack would seam to be more time consuming then it would be worth.
 
If you were to make biochar ( youtube; EVERYTHING YOU ever WANTED to KNOW about BIOCHAR) Make your baking setup so that it feeds the off-gasses into the original flame. There the gasses will burn giving you heat and biochar. Biochar can help potted plants, flower beds, gardens, and lawns.

​

 
I think some of y'all have the wrong idea about this. I'm not trying to go industrial. I don't need this to be super efficient. I need my wife to not get drunk and burn my wood turning wood in the fire pit. I just want to crank out a few of these every so often. As far as pvc, I know that to make paper bricks or logs out of your junk mail you don't need to compress it that much. A hydrolic jack is going to be a lot easier than pushing down on it with my body weight.

For clarification, the holes drilled in the pvc are for draining the liquid out. Ugg I don't know if went over that part. Basically you have to create a kind of slurry out of the sawdust and chips. So the 4" pvc has holes drilled all down the sides so it's like a strainer.

I know for an internet fact that this process will work with the junk mail slurry. There are just tons of videos of people doing it and saying it works for them. The only question is how well will it work with a sawdust slurry. Maybe I'll add some paper pulp. I've also read that you can add plaster of paris or other ... stuff to help congeal it. But again, I'm not going to be applying 1 ton of pressure to it. I"m just going to be squeezing all the water out of it. Should be fine.
 
Raif Harik said:
Hi does anyone compress their shavings and sawdust etc into logs/bricks for the fire? I found this thread here from 2011 that is interesting. I was just wondering if anyone was actively doing it and if so if they'd share their setup.

Turning woodworking dust and chips into burnable "logs"

Turning woodworking dust and chips into burnable "logs"
www.festoolownersgroup.com
Thanks
R
Click to expand...
15 or so years ago after I first began turning,I had a similar idea about using the dust and shavings to make "wood incense". I was turning alot of mesquite at the time. I had a couple of old plastic ice cube trays that I drilled a hole at the bottom of every cube opening in one of them. I then gathered up some dust and fine shavings and wet them down with water. I filled the tray with the holes in it with the "slurry" and put the other tray over top of it (they nested). I had a couple of pieces of scrap 1x4 board that I had cut to the length of the trays and sandwiched the ice cube trays bewtween them and used a couple of clamps to apply some pressure. The first batch didn't compress that well and was crumbly - but the second batch I applied more pressure and they turned out half decent & smelled great when my wife burned them. Granted, these small pucks aren't logs like you want to do - but it seems like the principle would be basically the same.
 
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