Tractors and wood! Show your pics

[goeduck]

That sounds like about 10 times the amount of work than just splitting more firewood. If I was going to do something besides burn split firewood I’d be burning wood chipper chips. I can get pretty much unlimited amounts of them for free. My dream stove is a auger fed from a hopper chip burner.

(as a way to get rid of sawdust byproduct as pellets, not to produce sawdust to make pellets)

 

[4570Man]

(as a way to get rid of sawdust byproduct as pellets, not to produce sawdust to make pellets)

I know. It still doesn’t make any sense. I’d have my years supply of firewood cut and split faster than a affordable pellet machine could make a barrel full. I’m betting anyone who saws enough to do that anyway already has plenty of slab wood and unfit saw logs to burn.

 

[goeduck]

I know. It still doesn’t make any sense. I’d have my years supply of firewood cut and split faster than a affordable pellet machine could make a barrel full. I’m betting anyone who saws enough to do that anyway already has plenty of slab wood and unfit saw logs to burn.

Oldpath05’s son in post 6028 apparently has more sawdust than he needs and is what the comment was based on. He has a shingle mill, it was not referring to your type operation.

 

[Jstpssng]

Seems like there would be something a person could make or buy to to make pellets out of sawdust to burn in a pellet stove. Some sort of binder to solidify the pellets.

Do you mean like this?
Biomass Pellet Maker|Make Fuel Pellets

Or maybe this one.
Make Your Own Pellets

 

[BrokenTrack]

My father has a pellet boiler and burns 12 ton a year. When we did the math on making our own pellets, it just did not work. By the time we got the chipper, hammer mill and edge runner, we would be deep in hock, and production would be incredibly slow.

The problem with burning wood chips is uniformity to size and drying the wood. Industrial boilers can dry the wood before it is fed into the boiler, but it would be cost prohibitive on a home unit.

The school my kids go to has a wood chip boiler to heat their complex, including the sidewalks and parking lots outside. Even then they have saved 1/2 the cost over the old school and their oil boiler. BUT with smart boards and stuff, their electricity costs doubled.

 

[4570Man]

I had something more in line with spreading the chips out on the parking lot on a hot day to dry them.

 

[Jstpssng]

I had something more in line with spreading the chips out on the parking lot on a hot day to dry them.

I had thought that if you dry the wood before chipping,then blow them into the storage bin to keep them dry.

My father has a pellet boiler and burns 12 ton a year. When we did the math on making our own pellets, it just did not work. By the time we got the chipper, hammer mill and edge runner, we would be deep in hock, and production would be incredibly slow.

The problem with burning wood chips is uniformity to size and drying the wood. Industrial boilers can dry the wood before it is fed into the boiler, but it would be cost prohibitive on a home unit.

The school my kids go to has a wood chip boiler to heat their complex, including the sidewalks and parking lots outside. Even then they have saved 1/2 the cost over the old school and their oil boiler. BUT with smart boards and stuff, their electricity costs doubled.

I came to the same conclusion about pellets. There's an old coal parlor heater in the family barn. I've thought about trying to burn chips in it, just because I could utilize my tops and small wood. It wouldn't be a big heat producer, just something to play around with.

 

[BrokenTrack]

I had thought that if you dry the wood before chipping,then blow them into the storage bin to keep them dry.


I came to the same conclusion about pellets. There's an old coal parlor heater in the family barn. I've thought about trying to burn chips in it, just because I could utilize my tops and small wood. It wouldn't be a big heat producer, just something to play around with.

I have invested some thought into this, and for me anyway, I have decided that wood chips is NOT the best direction for me.

Last year I even went into another direction; making charcoal from a couple of cord of wood, and I must say in 100% humility, that was a colossal failure.

Like you, all my woodstoves can burn coal, so I am going in a middle ground area...wood chunks. In this case it is baseball sized wood. That was part of the reason why I built a feller-buncher for my log trailer. The next step is to build a firewood chunker to help convert limbs, tops and saplings into firewood in a 100% mechanical way.

I think it would be really hard to get dirty chips (biomass) to burn. Even the local school has to use clean chips as dirty chips will just not work in their multi=million dollar boiler. I have welded up some industrial boilers, and even doodled up a few dirty chip design boilers, but honestly (and I could be wrong) I think firewood chunks is a better way to go.

 

[Gordon Gould]

About 45 years ago I worked with a clever guy who was a WWII immigrant from Hungry. I remember him building a self feeding sawdust stove during noon times. He said there were lots of sawdust stoves in the old country. Everyday he brought home the sweepings from the box and pallet shop which was mostly dry White Pine. To bad I can't remember much about the stove except it was about as big as a galvanized trash can.

gg

 

[Gordon Gould]

Thinking about that stove I remember there would be a cylinder of sawdust around the outside and the inside wall of the saw dust cylinder burned with the ashes dropping down in the middle. The heat was controlled by the feed rate making the cylinder taller or shorter. The more surface area the bigger the fire. Still pretty sketchy in my mind.

gg