shavings

[David Howe]

just started turning and can't believe the amount of shavings already. Does any one know any good uses for them?

 

[Kevin Jenness]

Good for compost if mixed with green material. Dry shavings can be used for animal bedding (no walnut, mahogany and some other species for horses).

 

[Marvin Jones]

I always look up the shavings before giving them away because of issues with some as Kevin said, that said a lady I knew kept a couple of dogs in a little back yard and was tickled to have me dump my shavings back there. I've used it for mulch but different woods make different colored mulch...

Couple of folks like to use fruit and nut wood shavings for smoking. Pecan, apple, etc.

I have yet to find a profitable solution, maybe one reason I live in an area of several one horse saw mills where you can pick up a trailer load of sawdust free, or for almost nothing.

 

[Roger Wiegand]

Advertise on Craigslist, apparently there are always takers.

Good for mulching areas where you don't want anything to grow (you need to supplement heavily with nitrogen if you use it in gardens).

Or you can just let them pile up in hops they will someday turn into something to put onto the garden:

 

[John Walls]

Better half uses some in her flower beds around the flowers but not directly on them.. I mix alot with fresh chicken coup manure/bedding, leaves and grass, let sit atleast a year, usually 2 then use in the garden. I never put it close to the plants, usually run a row up each side of plants around 10 inches to each side. I also pile straight shavings between the rows as a weed deterrent.

 

[Bill Boehme]

Warning about using fresh shavings as mulch or mixed in the soil as compost in the garden is that too much of the decaying wood will tie up available nitrogen thus depriving plants of an essential nutrient.

 

[Rusty Nesmith]

My neighbor takes all of mine for his garden. He said the mushrooms grow great in it.

 

[George Kuipers]

Used to give them to a chicken farmer, received a couple of dozen eggs in return with every delivery.
Sadly he passed.

 

[Brian Gustin]

Like George, I give most of mine away to my sister in law for her chickens and turkeys, she says they love the shavings to kick around in.. I also use it to mulch the raspberry beds, around some trees, and probably going to till some in to garden plot, if we don't do a garden this year - give it a year to compost...

 

[Mike Johnson]

My father raised a large number of Chinchillas for the fur market many moons ago, we used a lot of pine & maple wood shavings
for bedding that was replaced on a weekly basis. We would go through a truck load of shavings about every month. Any four legged
rodent can use wood shavings for bedding.

 

[Aaron Harris]

As others have said, general weed control and composting are good uses depending on the wood (no black walnut!), and supplemental nitrogen source such as blood meal or chicken manure. As we have two larger dogs in our fenced back yard that leave dinosaur-sized piles in my mulched flower beds (which I all too often find with my shoe soles!), I often cover them with shavings for lots of little mini compost piles that I can later shovel around flowers.

That and ashes from my smoker (which often includes cut-offs from suitable woods such as apple/cherry/pecan/hickory) have my plants and flowers more luxurious every year.

 

[Don Wattenhofer]

The shavings that I generate in the winter go into plastic grocery bags then into the wood stove in my shop. The shavings generated in the summer get spread on the path down to the dock.

 

[Mark Jundanian]

When you burn shavings in a wood stove, don't they burn pretty fast and hot?

 

[Mike Johnson]

If you have a hydraulic press, you can compress the shavings into logs to burn in a stove, fireplace or open fire.
The wood species will determine if you want to burn them in a fireplace or not. There are numerous recipes on compounds
to add to the shavings to provide different colors or aromas. Usually, you just add some water to moisten the wood chips
and then compress them in a form and let them dry.

 

[Don Wattenhofer]

When you burn shavings in a wood stove, don't they burn pretty fast and hot?

Yes they do but first I should give a background of my shop heating:

1. I have off peak electric floor heat which is still kind of pricey so I set the thermostat for about 45 degrees F and that keeps the floor from freezing.
2. I have an add on type wood burner with it's own blower.
3. In the morning when I go to the shop I put a bag of dry shavings from turning or planner shavings, then add some crumbled paper and kindling wood to get the fire going
4. As soon as the kindling is burning hot I add split and dried fire wood, then after coals are established more shavings can be added.
5. The other turning waste that can be disposed of are all of those weird shaped scraps like the corners that get band sawn off turning blanks.
6. With out the coals from the fire wood under the shavings there would not be much of a fire but if done properly they do add BTU's and that is better then paying the garbage man to haul them away.

 

[Tim Starliper]

I recently started turning some of my shavings into dust to use for filling cracks when necessary. As I turn a species, I gather shavings and put them in a coffee grinder and run it for 2 cycles of 30 - 40 seconds each. The dust then goes into an old prescription bottle that I label with the species. If I need to fill a crack or hole or whatever, some of that dust plus some thin CA works well. The rest generally goes up the chute into the dust collector and either gets spread on the path around the big garage at mom's house or just trashed (that bin has bits of everything in it, including whatever I suck up when using the dust collector to help clean the shop. Mine are not really suitable for anything other than a weed barrier. Too much of a mix in the bin. Larger cutoffs that are too small to use go to my father-in-law, and he heats his house with them (wood stove in the basement). No pressure treated or engineered wood (I.E. plywood, MDF, particle board, etc.)

 

[Marvin Jones]

There is a new business starting up not far from me, a man is grinding, treating, dyeing mulch. He said he will take all the shavings I can make.

 

[Emiliano Achaval]

Good for compost if mixed with green material. Dry shavings can be used for animal bedding (no walnut, mahogany and some other species for horses).

Shavings for horses can't have any small particles or dust. Woodturning shavings can't be used for horses. I guess you could take a chance with a hamster, but definitely not a horse.

 

[Rusty Nesmith]

I just brought my neighbor another pile a couple of days ago. Now I have room to start rough turning more bowls.

 

[Jason Matisheck]

You can start another hobby growing mushrooms.

 

[hughie]

For colder climes you can build a stove to burn them in so you can heat the shop. https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/19308

 

[Rusty Nesmith]

You can start another hobby growing mushrooms.

That’s what my neighbor uses it for.

 

[Don Wattenhofer]

I had to empty the shaving hopper for my DC so since I couldn't access the areas in the woods that I dump I thought I would dump them on a path across a neighbor's property. The hopper is mostly wood with a door for dumping in the bottom, some steel brackets to attach wheels, a trailer coupler, a rope sling to tip it down, and casters to move around the shop. The hopper is tipped down using an overhead electric hoist, then I hook it to my ATV and move it to where I plan to dump it. The trail is about 8' wide and the hopper load covered about 44 feet. Note that was mostly planer shavings.

 

[Sam Fleisher]

Warning about using fresh shavings as mulch or mixed in the soil as compost in the garden is that too much of the decaying wood will tie up available nitrogen thus depriving plants of an essential nutrient.

Will it do the same thing when it's on top of the soil and not mixed in? Like if spread around stuff to keep the grass down.

 

[Isaac Fisher]

I give most of mine to the ceramics department at my local community college. Used in one of their classes focused on raku, pit firing, barrel firing, and other low-tech kilns.

 

[Brian Gustin]

Will it do the same thing when it's on top of the soil and not mixed in? Like if spread around stuff to keep the grass down.

Yep. depending on how thick it is spread it works well as mulch, HOWEVER if using to mulch plants or flower beds, DO NOT use anything with Walnut in there. Nothing grows where walnut lies, so don't mulch flowerbeds with it. (Though, there are certain weeds and woody type seedlings that will still poke right through your sawdust pile, as I have found, since I use wood chips to mulch out my wood pile and tractor parking area)

Wood chips can go in compost pile as "brown matter" layer it with nitrogen rich materials (I.E. grass clippings) to balance out the pH.

Some folks will actualy buy clean bagged shavings for use in hamster cages and the like, and my sister in law takes as much as I'll give away in shavings & sawdust for her chickens.