I spent a little time tonight cleaning my dust collector and building a primary chip collector barrel which started me thinking, what to do with all the chips and dust? My last few projects have required a lot of face jointing and planing and the bags are piling up. I have been putting it in the garbage up until now, but I’m quickly outpacing the weekly pickup. Can it be composted? Will a compost site take it? It doesn’t burn very well because its too dense.
What do you do with your DC waste?
Replies
I don't use weekly pickup, but just wait and take a big load to the dump. I think this is what most people do. I bet sawdust could be composted I just don't want to do it in MY yard; if I found someone else to take it for that purpose that would be great. It's hard enough to keep the grade from rising around my small house as it is. If I composted it I'd just have to find somone who wants soil. In some ways it really is garbage, you know, the more you spread it around and work with it the more it is likely to get in your lungs. If I had many acres I would just take it out to the south forty and dump it. I know this isn't much help . . .
Brian
Some woodworkers I know use it as mulch on their gardens. Maybe put a "free" ad in the local paper for mulch. Local farmers may have a need for it. Others woodworkers dump it in the empty lot nextdoor. I use it as a cologne of sorts.
Chris @ www.flairwoodwork.spaces.live.com
- Success is not the key to happines. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. - Albert Schweitzer
The good use of sawdust now is for breeding worms. Worms are good machines for commercially producing natural fertilizer. The cost of healthy worms is around $140 per kg. Don't burn sawdust. masrolsumairi
Masrol,Why not burn sawdust?Dorsett
I am thinking you are joking, but I just can't tell. Problem on DC systems and sucking up a nail, is it can hit the impeller, cause a spark, and dust explodes very nicely. Don't want your neighbors thinking you are a terrorist now. Same thing if you try to burn a bunch of it, say by dumping the dust on the fire. If you weren't hairless to start with you would be real quick.
My dad told me a story about a kid in school, who collected all the dust from the pencil sharpeners, then went downstairs in the school to the big furnace. He tossed in a nice size bag of it. Well carbon mixed with dust is even more explosive and he lost most of the skin off off of his face and arms. Scarred for life as they say. And scared me forever.
AZMO <!----><!----><!---->
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I have 2 horse breeders who regularly take whatever we produce. When in the past I've had really large quantities (like 200 bags worth) I sold it to chicken farmers.
David Ring
http://www.touchwood.co.il/?id=1&lang=e
Ever thought of mixing with melted wax and making fire starting blocks? Not hard to do,and could sell on Ebay.
I tried that once. I used a couple of egg cartons (not the polystyrene kind - lol), a coffee can full of sawdust, and a few candle ends (SWMBO is a candle junkie).
It took around an hour to melt the candles, mix in the sawdust, and pour the concoction into the egg cartons. They worked great for starting fires, but my bubble burst when I saw those fire starter sticks at the grocery store for 98 cents each. - lol
I have way too much to compost or pile up. One nail or screw could cause a serious and expensive problem for an animal. Curbside garbage pick up charges per bag, a large one is $5, that can be $30/month. No dumps or landfills anymore, everything is either recycled or you pay. Household garbage is incinerated for electricity production. I keep floor sweepings and other junk out of my collector. A local wood processor allows me to dump it on his sawdust pile.
Beat it to fit / Paint it to match
Mine goes to my buddy's ranch where it gets tilled into his garden, spread around the corrals, or just dumped in the pasture.
My headache is all the random cutoffs that accumulate. I tend to keep cutoffs until they start taking over and 3-4 times a year, I make a dump run. When I go to the dump, they send me to the recycling area where my pile goes into all the other wood waste and yard waste. They process it into compost and sell it.
Last year, I started dumping my scraps in the yard waste container but, after a couple of weeks, the pickup guy told me that I couldn't do that.
Dave,
I hear you on the cut-offs problem! They're beginning to take over the real estate in my shop, and I don't know how to deal with it.
I used to have a woodstove and would burn the scraps in the winter for heat. Now I don't, and it seems like none of my friends have fireplaces or woodburners either. So the stuff is piling up.
I thought of running the long strips through my yard chipper, but what to do with all the end cuts? I'm frugal, so just sticking them in the garbage seems so wasteful. Maybe I just need to get more ruthless though.
ZoltonIf you see a possum running around in here, kill it. It's not a pet. - Jackie Moon
I hate to throw away cut offs too, because you know how expensive wood is, It doesn't grow on trees you know, oh wait yes it does.
http://www.cranbrookart.edu/museum/peteran.html
http://www.mossonline.com/product-exec/product_id/31681/category_id/36
One person's scrap is another persons treasure.
Totally unrelated to scrap but clearly thinking creatively with CNC. Google Demakersvan for their site.
://http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A31431&page_number=1&template_id=1&sort_order=1
Rick,
That demilune table made of cut-offs is hilarious. Turning junk into art and selling it for big prices - who says this isn't a great country?
Thanks for that link. I'm getting a head start on my cut-off highboy...
Zolton
If you see a possum running around in here, kill it. It's not a pet. - Jackie Moon
http://www.cranbrookart.edu/museum/peteran.html
Gord Peteran's scrap demilune in not only humorous, it's brillant. First saw it in http://www.woodwork-mag.com a few years ago. Some flks were actually offended by it. Peteran has some great work in his portfolio. Prety mixed bag actually.
http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/books/4382.htm
Rick,
Interesting is all I can say.Chris @ http://www.flairwoodwork.spaces.live.com
- Success is not the key to happines. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. - Albert Schweitzer
Zolton,
If ya be patient and have have some really small offcuts:
http://landmarksofsf.com/photoindex.html
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Intarsia
It burns. If your local ordinance allows it can easily be burned in a burn barrel (55 gallon drum). With a full barrel, once the top is lit which may take a few small pieces of kindling, it will slowly burn down in about 10 hours or so.
Paul
It can be composted... but you'd be hard pressed to do it yourself unless you have a really big yard. One bag was more then enough for my yard. I'd calla comercial composter to see if they'll take it. I assume that what they'll take varies from place to place.
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As for cut offs. Go camping! Hardwood is excelent for a campfire, and is great to cook over.
I'm surprised that it hasn't already been mentioned but walnut sawdust and shavings are very toxic to horses and moderately toxic to most plants, so walnut, and probably some of the tropical woods, need to be kept separate from the rest of the waste, if it is going to be used around animals or in a compost pile.
John White
Good call John,ALL wood dust from non treated material is classified as hazardous, toxic, carcinogenic etc. and should be handled accordingly.
The exposure limits set by OSHA are extremely tight. Don
Your absolutly right I do remember walnut being bad for horses. Also I think putting saw dust around your plants is not too advisable.
Dave
Children are our future, unless we stop them now -- Homer Simpson
The problem with placing fresh sawdust in the soil is that as it breaks down it ties up nitrogen that the plant needs.John W.
Seajai,
I used to work with a Swedish company who composted old bark and sawdust and I sold it to the Saudis. 10,000 metric tons at a time. From my soil science classes and this experience, I would not recommend it as a soil additive directly. It needs to be composted for 6 months or more. The hard part is getting oxygen to the mix so it will compost. Dust is so fine, and compresses very nicely, so it is hard to even get the process to work. We had a machine that windrowed the material every day. It needs lot of water, and you need to add some nitrates for the microbes so they can digest the dust. If you don't, the microbes starve for nitrogen and the process stalls. Once composted it works pretty well, but way to much work for me.
John W is correct, alot of the wood we use is not good for animals. I can't imagine the glues and such in plywood, particel board etc are good for them either, but then again maybe you are trying to get rid of your wifes pet hampster?
I borrow my neighbors trash can if it is not full and add to it! We also get a bulk trash from curbside a few times a year so I put scraps and prunings there.
AZMO
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-------(*)/ (*) http://www.EarthArtLandscape.com
I haul it out to the woods behind my house and scatter it amidst the pine and leaf mulch (it's my land so there's no offending of my neighbors -- not likely that it would, though, they do the same with their wood scraps). The offcuts (even small ones) I tend to save -- until I'm running out of room, then a camping trip takes care of most of it.
I do add it to my compost pile. We compost all of our food scraps and yard waste. Mixing the wood dust and shavings into the compost is a great way to recycle it. When mixed with other waste, it doesn't compact, and it does compost very quickly.
I have a wood pile where I toss small logs, limbs and cutoffs that are unusable. It makes a nice habitat for small animals and birds while it slowly decays. When decayed enough, I put the detritus in the compost.
I also have a large raised-bed garden so I have a use for all the compost. I do use shavings for mulch sometimes too.
Scotty, AKA Greenman
I put the DC sawdust in my compost bin. I alternate layers of sawdust and soil and give each layer a spray of water to get the micro bugs working. After a few day the worms move in and in about a month the sawdust is half its pervious volume. Six months to a year later usable garden soil for free.
I must add that the DC sawdust is not painted, glued, particle board junk or MDF dust just plain wood. Ash, alder, pine, oak, redwood and poplar. I used to have a boat and worked with teak all that dust went in the trash.
All the stuff on the floor with all the other woodshop debris goes into the trash. Much smaller in volume compared to the DC.
rr
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