Waste Products - Sawdust and Flitches and slabs

[longtime lurker]

One of the things you got to watch for with all this - and this is just a general observation - is that you need to be careful that you aren't spending $2 to make $1. I've seen it happen, lots of times.

Do your sums always with it.... as soon as you start installing equipment to process or value add it, or spend time handling it, or cart it away for someone else to handle it.... well all those things cost money. Sometimes the cheapest thing to do is drop a match in it and cut your losses. Thats why it's called "waste". There are exceptions but be very careful about any value adding to waste because mostly it is low margin products that need big volumes to pay. Every year I look at spending money to install a chipper, and instead I take the same amount of money and buy more logs. I know which one is a more profitable venture.

Just adding another $0.02 worth to the topic.

[Bandmill Bandit]

I borrowed a friends 2 year old Vermeer chipper for a day last fall. He wanted to do some minor additions/mods to the feed hopper and I am good fabricator and my little lady wanted 12 -15 yds of chips for mulch so we came to a deal. Took about 5 hours to do the chipping by myself and about 4 hours to do the mods he wanted so it was a pretty fair trade that way BUT 5 hours of fuel on that thing was over 8 gallons and it takes a LOT of flitchs and slabs to make 15yds of mulch. I did NOT lose money but I sure as hell didn't make any.

A day of sawing lumber would have been a $1000 in my jeans and the boy scouts would have got a lot more fire wood with zero cost/clean up to me. I could have had the chips delivered for $150 for a 15 yd load and charged the $500 we agreed the fabrication work was worth and spent 5 hours on a Sunday fishing with my grandson or the like.

Was looking at a chipper BEFORE that experience. Haven't look since!
 

[moodnacreek]

Back in the eighties , at the trade shows you would get hounded to buy a tub grinder. Same might be said for the larger firewood processors.    On the edge of the city a guy with a large, growing pile of wood he got paid to cut, would be your competition .  A greenhorn might think he could buy the machine and the wood to feed it.

[rjwoelk]

Bandit i was looking at chipper as well
But i think i will forget about it. Bundle up slabs and sell them cheep rnough to get them gone.

[Crusarius]

Right now I am just cutting my slabs up and using them for my own firewood. Hopefully I never have to buy firewood again. but it all depends on what I end up cutting.

[Cedarman]

Biochar is a very salable product.  Have any of you put a pencil to see if there is any money to be made? And what scale would it take to be profitable?

[Leigh Family Farm]

that being said I did think about getting a chipper to run the slabs thru and make a wood chip mulch but again it requires a chipper and time to do it. I have a tree service friend who is going to bring over his chipper one day and experiment with this. see if it is worth doing and how long it takes I imagine if it was all piled up and the chipper parked beside it that it wouldn't take all that long. and it would make nice ground cover for under the log decks to keep the chance of rocks and dirt away from the logs

This was my first thought as well: borrow or rent a chipper one day to see if it was profitable. After reading Bandit's post, I am reconsidering. It seems the only profitable way to get a chipper is by bartering and then its a break even. 

Slabs I bundle up and sell as firewood. Here's one of my racks, with a complete bundle to the left. I use a pair of 2700 lb. poly straps to keep the bundle tight and easy to handle. Customer buys it by the bundle.

@Brucer Thats a nice bundler. Did you build that yourself? 

[alan gage]

Interesting thread. As I began milling this summer I'm starting to accumulate a slab pile. Was thinking of bundling and selling it but firewood isn't a real big deal around here. I wonder if a good use for my slabs would be to trade them for logs. Sometimes I see people with nice logs but they just want firewood out of it. I could offer them slab wood in trade.

Alan

[Sixacresand]

There is a Scandinavian practice of burying wood under topsoil and planting vegetables in it.  Supposedly the rotting wood provides nutrients and retains water for the roots.  Look up kugel garden.

I did not know that.  

It seems that pine scraps are not good for the soil and the Krugel method. 

[Crusarius]

Alan that could actually work out ok. That would cut most of their labor out of it.

[YellowHammer]

I used to try to sell the sawdust and also the slabs and KD edgings and scraps. No more, wasn't worth my time. Now I use them as a purchasing perk.  If a customer buys $20 worth of wood from us they can take all the scraps, slabs and sawdust they want for free. They can use it for stove wood, firewood, pen turning blanks, whatever. Thing is nobody ever only buys $20 worth of furniture grade wood so getting " free" bulk firewood motivates them to shop with us when their firewood pile gets low, buy some nice wood and leave with a truck or trailer full of firewood or sawdust.  The KD edgings make great kindling, also.
We don't get rid of all our waste that way but in the winter people line up to the slab pile to fill their truck.  Not so much during the summer.
One interesting note is that Hardwood sawdust is very acidic and will nuke the soil it is put on. So instead of it being a waste stream, we spread it out on our field and woods roads to keep vegetation from growing as a natural herbicide or mulch.  

Once the sawdust is burned in a firepit it turns alkaline and all the minerals get concentrated. So spreading the ashes on the pasture or lawn is one one of the best things to do for the soil, and it will really make a pasture green up.

[Brucer]

Bruce, thats a nice bundler. Did you build that yourself?

Yes. Here's  a link to the thread from 6 years ago where I described the design and construction process. Link

[Stephen1]

Brucer I lke your metal racks, I am working with wooden ones now, and they do not hold up. 
I saw the wood in my racks to 20" lengths, then load them on skids with uprights, then I shrinkwrap to move the skids. If the skids are full, like now, I have discovered that I can only lift half the bundleafter straping with plastic strapping. and then I pile those bundles, waiting till next year to saw and fill the skids. 
We are using the wood to fire the evapourator for maple syrup. Since I saw a mixture of wood as long as it is dry it burns great, softwood means we just fill the firebox more. 

[doc henderson]

This is small scale.  I make fire starters from my planer and jointer chips.  We use a wood stove in the house and shop.  We go through about 4 cords a season.  We (by word of mouth) get partial used up candles.  I get bulk cupcake papers.  I have a double boiler and a hot plate, as well as my own (not my wife's pampered chef) cupcake tins from wally world.  I bring home boxes from work with lids that held reams of paper.  I have Christmas yarn from when my kids were little that I dip in hot wax and cut 1 inch wicks.  I fill papers with chips, pour wax over and after a few minutes, put in a wick.  let it cool for 5 minutes and then put in the box.  I made dividers out of cardboard so i can stack in layers and get a bout 250 fire starters per case.  I try to have 6 cases on hand and put a dozen or so into decorative tins for gifts, and by the case for my brother in-law in Scots Bluff, Ne. they burn with a 2 inch by 10 inch flame and get even stubborn wood going early in the morning.

[WLC]

doc, that's a neat idea.  Ever think about doing it for some side income and selling them?  

[doc henderson]

 

 

[doc henderson]

As a gift, I only give a dozen or so.  The make the hearth area smell nice due to the left over scent from the candles.  I do add some scent as well.  My brother in law uses the most other than me, and brings me all their left over candles in blue bunny ice cream buckets.   The scouts do an aviary in the old part of town so now the wax is nearly free.  This day in age, if someone thought it was a candle and burned a house down, I would prob. be liable.  I gave some one year at work and sure enough, due to the wick and the smell, someone sat it on a wooden mantle and lit it.  She got it carried to the sink.  I also worry the old folks (older than me) will think they are high fiber (and they are)  cupcakes (which they are not).  Thanks for the compliment. it would be easy for anyone with a woodworking habit surrounded by a few women, who like candles and the sensi stuff to source their own.  You are welcome to use the idea.  They are easy to light with a lighter.  Even better is to use liquid glycerine and potasium permanganate  to make them spontaneously combust.  check you tube! :christmas:

[LeeB]

If you have a candle factory anywhere near you, they often have waste wax for dirt cheap. 

[alanh]

My wife had a candle business for about 10 years, she made the same firestarters, actually did pretty well with them,  here retail customers would keep a box next to the cash register, people would grab a few at check out, still pretty tough to get rid of a ton of sawdust/shavings...

[Cedarman]

We sell about 10,000 # of cedar sawdust that is less than 25 mesh to a company that uses it in incense sticks or candles.  Not sure which.

[curved-wood]

 <

 Here is a rack that I used many years for cutting the small edgings. The X are spaced 16'' apart. I put the blue rope, that comes from used hay bailing rope...free, before putting the wood in the rack. The chain saw has to be hold low to avoid kicking that is  more perpendicular to the 2x2 then at the horizontal. After tied up, the last cuttings were used to wedge the bundles tight. We fill it in as we were sawing and was cut and tied when the employee had nothing to do , which happens more often that I wishes . The red boards are just screwed and needed to be change once in a while because of chain saw overcuts. Not great great money but for the small edgings that is the best profitable system that I used. Attach bundles commands a better price and clean the space.

[mike_belben]

I processed waste vegetable oil for truck fuel and found that lots of it was too dirty for economical processing so the settlings and layer just above it became a real disposal problem. As the scale went up into the hundreds then several thousand gallons, the problem got pretty big.

A cabinet shop was dumpstering vacuum bagged KD sawdust.  I found that a bucket of sawdust would absorb half a bucket of oil slop and the mix was great at starting the stove.  I began giving it away to woodburners and all loved it.  No more paper or kindling, just a few scoops and a second with the mini torch and youre off to the races.  Then one year i was out of money and unprepared for winter firewood wise.  I was shoveling veggie dust into the stove to get by.  Modified the stove with some baffling and discovered i could get more heat with much less effort by burning this stuff, but it took a reload every hour in that small stove.  

So i built a hopper with an auger and a variable speed gear drive from dumpster diving.  turned a water heater and some stainless 4" sch 40 into a rocket stove for this fuel, fed by the hopper.  Itll run 900-1400F in the burner tube and only 250f up the stack with the water heater body at a consistent 500F just like a pellet stove.  Adjust the feed rate up or down to change the output temp.  Draft is dictated by the combustion rate itself, no door, no damper and no ash either, just run and fill.  

I have a large stainless water coil that fits over the stove perfectly and think someday i will try to make steam spin a little DC fanwheel to charge batteries.  The condensing side will reclaim heat [and process water] for domestic hot water heating.  


Anyway, the point was to turn routine waste into routine savings.  I enjoy the tinkering and thinkering of it.  Not really about making money but i think if youre spending time and money just to get rid of something that you could potentially incorporate into reducing your expenses then its worth the initial effort to create that process.  A sawmill buying 3phase power forever and struggling to get rid of sawdust when it could invest in creating 3phase power FROM its sawdust stream..  That sorta stuff turns my gears. 

[pwrwagontom]

Great thread! Sounds like everyone has the same problem that I do.
I've given away hardwood slabs as firewood, usually chip a few yards of softwood slabs each spring to make mulch for the flower gardens.  Burning ends up being more of a chore than it is worth for me.
End up dumping the sawdust in the woods, unfortunately I haven't found a use for it other than spreading it on the ground with a york rake.

[Tin Horse]

I've got lots of slab wood in piles. I separate the hard and soft wood. Can't find the time to deal with any of it. I've given away some soft wood. At some point I'd like to make a system like I've seen on here. Some people barely say "thanks".
They don't get to come back.

[pineywoods]

I must be livin right. I have a blower on my mill,blows the sawdust into a big pile behind the mill shed. Last week, a neighbor came by and asked I would mind if he hauled away some sawdust to use in his garden. Told him I'd be happy if he took it ALL. He came back with his tractor with a front end loader and a big dump trailer. Already hauled off 3 loads. Last load, he says OH I just bought a chipper. How about the edgings and slabs in the burn pile..Oh YEAH ;D