Saw Dust Recycling

[phi1l]

I find that I am accumulating quite a bit saw dust. Other than send to the dump, or burning, are there any useful things to do with this suff??

[Black wallnut]

You could make your own paper.

[RAFlorida]

or

your own Particle Board?

[smorris]

I use it as mulch for the garden. Mahogany dist, chips, etc end up in the flower beds. The sawdust extracts nitrogen from the soil so add a little fertilizer when you put it down.

[vaking]

Do you use woodfiller? Sawdust mixed with glue is supposed to be the best woodfiller. You just need to mix when you need it - cannot mix in advance.

[dbhost]

Back in the day of milk cartons, we used to take the sawdust from Dad & Grandpa's shops, and stuff the dust into empty milk cartons, then fill with wax. These made GREAT camp fire starters

I have done the wood glue / sawdust filler idea. Have done recently when I ran across an unexpected void in a piece I was turning....

[LCHIEN]

I gave my last full bags to my BIL to use as compost material for his garden. But, he and my sister are now separated so I don't know what I'll do with the next load... DC Bag is only half full at the moment so I won't have to worry about it for another 6 months.

[LarryG]

I have used it for oil dry ... which helps speed things along when the stuff gets to its ultimate destination, the burn pile.

[JSUPreston]

I think I read this here...if you have wood that you need to dry slowly (or was it to keep moisture content consistent...I can't remember), place the wood in a sealed container with the saw dust and chips. Supposed to keep it from warping, cracking, etc.

[LCHIEN]

When I was in Boy scouting with my son's troop, one of the scoutmasters swore by sawdust mixed with some diesel fuel as the world's best campfire starter. This guy and his son were repressed pyros, i think. using shavings and tinder to start twigs and branches working up to logs was way too slow and laborious for him.

[Uncle Cracker]

Just a note of caution... Some types of wood produce toxic or highly irritating smoke when burned. If your dust is not from a wood you routinely see burned, I wouldn't take a chance, at least on an indoor fireplace. This is especially true of treated woods. My dust bin also has dust from acrylics, so I'd never burn that.

[Alex Franke]

I wrote an article on composting sawdust a while back: http://www.thefrankes.com/wp/?p=36 Use the pager at the bottom -- it's 5 pages.

Never burn any sheet goods -- including particle board, MDF, plywood, etc. It's often made with urea formaldehyde, and you don't want that stuff in your air any more than it needs to be.

[MilDoc]

Mulch. As noted add nitrogen fertilizer too.

When I have too much, my suburb picks it up for recycling.

[Alex Franke]

Just don't use any black walnut sawdust as mulch on your veggies. There's chemical in it called juglone, which will kill off your tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and some other plants.

[annunaki]

It's a great insulator

One summer as a kid we vacationed at a cabin in Keezer Falls Maine which had an Ice Box. We went to get a block of ice for it at a general store. Out back they had a huge open bin filled with saw dust about 3 feet high. There was a shovel-you paid your price for the block of ice and grabbed the shovel and dug it out. This ice had been cut from the lake that past winter and was kept from melting bu being buried in that mound of saw dust.