How many amateur or semi-pro woodworkers are there? How many subscriptions and newsstand sales of FW are there? What would you say would be a reasonable guesstimate of the number in the whole world?
I’m a retired news correspondent who lives in rural VA about 70 miles due West of DC and 20 miles East of Winchester, VA. Please visit us at www dot pyechamberlayne dot com.
My wife Mary and I are longtime amateur carpenters and woodworkers who generate on a busy day of planing and general tool work about two 35 gallon bags of sawdust. Probably 100 bags a year. I get “woodweb update” from www.woodweb.com and today’s edition had a discussion of machines that compress sawdust into burnable fuel.
We have long wished we could find a machine for about a thousand dollars the size of and working much the same way as an old-fashioned trash compacter that would turn our sawdust into fuel we could burn in our cast iron woodstove. The closest thing to that that we and and other people we know of — Chris Becksvoort comes to mind — do is to burn our scrap.
So I thought I’d write to one or more of these companies and try convince them to make scaled down versions of their products for people. I’m sure it would be a money maker. Once I get a sense of the size of the market — I’ve tried the US Census bureau with no luck — I’ll write to one of the companies that makes the smallest one of seen.
There’s a picture of it at http://www.comafer.it/franc/d60.htm. It’s about a third the size of a Volkswagen bug, 4 1/2′ tall by 3 1/2′ X 4 1/2′.
Pye
Replies
I can't answer your question about how many woodworkers there are. I do believe, however, that you would be hard pressed to get a unit much smaller that would produce enough pellets to make it worth turning on. The Peoplwe around here that use pellet stoves buy pellets by the ton.
Jack
Have any idea what a commercial unit would cost. There is so much sawdust that is a problem to get rid of, and the rising price of fuel, it seems there might be a real future for sawdust pellets. I'd imagine the same machine used for animal feeds would work.
I'm considering an outside boiler that would use corn or pellets to heat the wood shop so am somewhat interested in the production of the pellets.
I don't know how much the commercial units are. My point was , a smaller unit may not be economical considering the volume of pellets needed and perhaps a little more research on out[put may be needed.
Jack
JL, each bag of sawdust we remove weighs at least 20 pounds, and we generate, conservatively, a hundred bags a year. A ton of wooden fuel would be a nice supplement to the wooden logs we burn. Briquettes stored in our woodshed would also be less unattractive than the piles of sawdust in our woods.
Further more the trip from the shop to the woodshed is almost all under roof and much shorter thanto trip to the area in the woods where we dump sawdust. I am 68 and such considerations are more important than they were when I was younger.
Consider, too, the benefit to the urban amateur or small pro wood shop. When I was a member of the Washington Woodworkers Guild, a number of us would complain about the difficulty or removing sawdust.
Pye
If you think about it, everything we send out as trash is either burnable or can be recycled. Of course separating it all is the problem, so we send it to the landfill. I am suprised that some of the power cos. are not burning more of it.
I agree with you. My only point is that the unit you listed (I couldn't read the Italian) may be as small as you can get to economically produce pellets. I think you may need a little more research into output of the unit befor calling for a smaller unit. Perhaps a co-op purchase of a unit that size may be the most economical way to go.
Jack
How many amateur or semi-pro woodworkers are there?
14,674,328, in just the US.
If I win anything please notify me, I'll provide my address!
Doug
Doug, are you kidding? That seems like too large a number. Where did you get the number? If the number were that large, it would make my task easier than I have expected it to be.
Pye
It was clearly a joke.
Boss
Apparently not all that clear!
Doug:
Your number sounds HIGH. Are you telling us that 21% of the US is woodworker? Wht is the definition of woodworker? Someone who strips an old dresser once in their lifetime or a real woodworker.
Interesting...but not beleivable.
Thank you,
Cheatah
On the other hand, there are supposedly 26 million serious golfers in the US. I would think the number of woodworkers was a decent percentage of that.
Bob
"Are you telling us that 21% of the US is woodworker?"No, he isn't. Recheck your arithmetic. Approximately 15 million is nowhere near a fifth of the approx. 300 million population of the US.
Don:
My bad.
It is more like 4%. You are right. I did doublecheck the math. 4% sounds believable.
I knew there was a reason I was not a finance major.Thank you,
Cheatah
Cheatah,
Depends on where you live. 5 of the 7 houses within sight of me have pretty complete woodworking shops. 2, me and a neighbor, are full-time woodworkers, a third is retired Ethan Allen shop foreman. I'd be willing to bet that Rockingham County, VA has a percentage approaching 30% woodworkers. Maybe more. Seems like everyone around here has a neighbor or an uncle who does woodworking.
Edit: Maybe it's just the company I keep.
Cheers,
Ray Pine
Edited 6/1/2006 9:02 am ET by joinerswork
Doug,
Sorry you missed the prize. You had the right answer, just the wrong question. Your answer of 14,674,328 is correct if you are answering, "How many jelly beans will fit into a 2 HP cyclone DC with a 55 gal drum?"
By the way I almost spit my coffee on the keyboard. LOLEric"When it comes time to die, make sure all you have to do is die." -Jim Elliot
Doug,
I think you must have forgotten to count yourself.
"Kinky for Gov. of Texas"
Damn, 14,674,328 + 1 = 14,674,329
My bad.
EDID; I'm glad to see your back supporting Kinky instead of the Mav's. Not that I dont want to see the Mav's do good, It's just my feeling that we need Kinky more then we need the Mav's to win!
Edited 5/30/2006 2:31 pm ET by DougU
Doug,
Your number may not be too far off. Here is a clip from an article on the Home page of this site:
U.S. sales of power tools increased for the sixth year straight, according to a recent industry report, and power tool manufacturers are taking advantage of the growing market with a steady stream of new product releases.
Power tool sales grew to $8.6 billion in 2005 from $8.13 billion in 2004 and $7.7 billion in 2003, according to a January report from Specialists in Business Information, a division of MarketResearch.com. Researchers expect sales to continue to grow steadily and reach $11 billion by 2010.
Somebody is buying all that stuff. By your estimate that is only $586.00 per person. Not unreasonable.
-Chuck
Maybe you will win that prize. LOL!
Maybe you will win that prize.
You guys thought I was kidding?
I'm hurt.
Doug
Go anyone other than Rick Perry!!!!!!! Unless you like the idea of someone taking your home and land to make a road next to one that already exist. I am thinking of writing in WILLIE NELSON!! Glad to see some other Texans out there I thought I was the only one on KNOTS.
All magazines have to print a statement (at intervals) about the number of issues published, how many given for promotion, number of subscribers, number of newsstand sales, etc. If you look carefully at your back issues for the fine print you will eventually find it. That will answer part of your question.
As to making your own sawdust logs/pellets. Maybe you should look at a hydraulic log splitter and adapt the idea to ram the dust into a cylinder or a brick.
Or look into the systems that use hog fuel (sawdust and wood chips) and adapt your wood stove to burn the stuff as is.
;-) LoL --- As to how many woodworkers are out there?.....One...Me!.....Everyone else is just a Wannabe!---LoL ;-) Ha Ha HA!!!
Spec, your Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) suggestion is good.
The log-splitter idea is good too, VERY good, I would say, but way beyond me to implement. I would note that, while a log-splitter takes hands-on operation for every log, the production of compressed-sawdust fuel would have to be largely automatic.
I never heard of "hog fuel" before. Cab you URL me some uses of it?
chrs,
pye
.
There are firms who gather and publish this kind of info. I'd contact a manufacturer or two and ask them for advice on how to pursue this. You can also infer this from sales of existing items, for example, you might pick unit sales of, say router tables, and use that as a basis. My guess is that this might be a pretty good rough first guess as most fairly dedicated wood workers will have one but not contractors or weekend warriors. I'm new to woodworking so perhaps this isn't the best metric but you get the idea.
I've asked the Census Bureau and will now try Delta and powermate and Lee Valley Tools.
Do you all know if this frorum is mederated? I would think most employees opf FWW would know the approximate population of amateur and small professional woodshops.
Pye
www dot pyechamberlayne dot com
As far as I know, it's not moderated as in formally monitored but there are a number of FWW employees who regularly comment. Check the 'Magazine Feedback' forums on the left to gather names.Good luck with this, I think it's an excellent idea and would be excited to see this kind of local recycling made possible. I don't generate enough sawdust for it to be useful personally but I think it's important for us as a nation to get serious about using materials and energy more intelligently. Another avenue are trash compactors - not sure what would happen if you put a bag full of sawdust in a trash compactor but it might be a useable product.
I think Chris' idead of a cylinder type compressor to make logs would be a great idea also, the big problem with any of the uses would to be able to find a binding agent to mix with the sawdust and chips befor compressing.
Jack
I believe they use parrafin to bind presto logs, along with tremendous pressure. They come out of the press smoking hot.
Since the house is on fire let us warm ourselves. ~Italian Proverb
Hog fuel is the byproduct of sawmills, at least that's what it's called here in BC. It's all the sawdust, planer chips, and bark chips and waste resulting from the conversion of logs to boards. It is often burned to produce electricity to sell to the utilities beyond what the mill needs for it's own heat (for the kilns) and power uses.
Put 'hog fuel' in you search engine and after you get past the listings for motorcycles there should be some info to read.A number of greenhouse operators also burn the stuff to heat their greenhouses in the winter here because it's cheaper than natural gas, and they grow vegetables and flowers year round. Big operations of over 40 acres or more under glass growing hydroponic tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers that taste way better than the field stuff trucked up from California and Mexico.I rented a house once that had a wood cookstove in the basement that was setup to burn sawdust. There was a hopper on the side that you filled with the sawdust (duh) that feed the firebox. I never used it so I don't know how the mechanism worked. The landlord said that they used it for all the cooking, including baking bread throughout the late 40's and all the 50's.
That would be the best route to take rather than trying to add the complexity (not to mention the wasted electricity) and cost of a machine to squish the sawdust into something to burn, when it can be made to burn in the fluffy state in the first place.Best of luck with your quest.
>Once I get a sense of the size of the market -- I've tried the US Census bureau with no luck -- <
You may want to go to the Audit Burea of Circulation website and poke around there. The information that you find there is over a year old (you'd probably have to pay for more current info, but its there). The last time I looked there I was surprised that Better Homes and Gardens' Wood magazine was listed at over 800,000. (I wonder if the amatuer/ semi-pro market is over a million? I'll bet if you merged it with all aspects of home improvement that used wood materials and power tools you'd have to be in the neighborhood of a million?) Good luck.
Pye;
Maybe instead of trying to compress a bunch of smaller pellets maybe you should look at compressing something firewood size. Perhaps some kind of cylinder press might accomplish this. A larger piece of fuel would probably store easier too. How much of your shavings would be considered toxic. You might look at composting your shavings and selling them off to local gardeners. We usually til them into the garden and get good results but I am told that if you add some nitrogen they break down quicker.
Chris
There are a lot of stoves that take the pellet size fuel (corn or wood pellets), and there is a great need for the fuel. Don't discourage him to much. Pellets are a very convenient size to handle manually or by mechanically and store. Much more convenient than a larger size. I will install a pellet or possibly a firewood boiler to heat my shop before next winter so I must weight the cost of pellets or corn or the work needed to prepare fire wood shortly. Pellets are a pretty good size business for heating and also for livestock feeds.
Maybe we could get FWW to do an article on makeing wood pellets they have more sources and resources than we have.
Jack
FWW do an article on pellets....
I'm all for that. Yea! Yea!
Geez, all the gripes about not enough fine woodworking in Fine Woodworking and you guys want them to show you how to make pellets? Sounds more like a project for Popular Mechanics.
Since the house is on fire let us warm ourselves. ~Italian Proverb
I drop my saw dust of at a local farm, the horse bed down it the famer told me. I think the concept of larger compresed log like things might work. Either way it is a dame same to waste all of our sawdust!
Rich
Hope your not droping off any walnut sawdust for those horses, not good for there hoves(sp?) I think it does something really nasty to them.
I dont belive this is myth, came right from a horse breader that used to come to our shop to get sawdust.
I'm also certain that you dont want to use walnut sawdust for a mulch.
Doug
It would be handy if you added a small chipper so small scraps could be consumed.
I like your thinking, most new machines today are repeats of glorious remembrances of 1930s factory technology or 1960s European tech. Very little in the way of innovation. If you think about it, Saw Stop may have the only innovation in 30 years.
Good Luck with your endeavors!
Pye,
After a quick Google search, I see that there are several manufatures that sell industrial size machines. I'm not sure if an old food processing extruder type machine would work or not. I would tend to try to compress the saw dust into log size objects. The idea is to recycle your byproduct by not incurring a great cost.
I have often thought of this idea. I usually compost the saw dust for the garden. But you have my wheels spinning. I did find out that NO wood binders are used in pellet making. The natural wood lignums are a natural binder (once placed under pressure, which, generates heat).
The cheapest way to test this is to use a cylinder with a plunger to compress the sawdust. I think a log splitter could be converted, atleast to try this. I'll see what I can do to test this.
Joe
Is it really saw dust or wood dust?
Joe, Please in your testing, keep in mind that while you are compressing those shavings in that cylinder, you might be making a small bomb. Use a GOOD cylinder! I'd hide behind a big tree, the first couple times...
Cheers,
Ray
Joe, I hope you succeed in compressing some sawdust. If you do, would you please post pix of how you did it? If not here then on a website. I gather pix can go here, but there's probably a bandwidth restriction.
The 20-ton or whatever force of a hydraulic wood splitter ought to be plenty of power. The cycle time is slow, though.
the estimated $560 per year spent on woodworking equipment by 15 million Americans is a good, useful figure. 15 million still sounds high to me. Much less is still my guess. There is a high-end cabinet shop near me called Winchester Woodworking -- thgey do work for the White House, the CIA, the State dept and they use, wear out and buy a lot of the same tools I have -- in addition to gigantic CNC cutters and other incredible stuff. My point is that a lot of big firms are part of the buying pool described. WW, by the way, pays to have its mountains of sawdust hauled off. I'm working on trying to change that.
I now have written to Delta and Powermatic. Lee Valley Tools may have some ideas, although they onyl make a few products -- including a router table Mary and I are very fond of -- especially since we got our dust collector installed.
I will, as someone suggested, try to contact thed FWW people directly.
Pye
It sounds like you have a lot of sawdust avalible to you. Perhaps the unit you first alluded to may be the way to go. I know around here ther always seems to be a shortage of pellets. You may be able to start a whole new business with ready made market.
Jack
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