Uses for Shavings

[Sebastiaan56]

The Lower Blue Mountains is disappearing under a pile of shavings. Within the shed, within tossing distance, on the paths, on the vege beds, in the mice cage, the chook pen etc, etc. Mistaken for snow when its pine, complaints from neighbours when its Camphor, lofted by the breeze to cover the washing, more compost than Peter Cundall's place, you get the idea.

Seems a bit boring, what creative uses are there for piles of shavings?

Sebastiaan

[Hardenfast]

I think you've about covered all of my ideas, Seb. I'll be interested to watch the forum work this one over.

Wayne

[wands]

Kitty Litter, put it in plastic bags (used) on the nature strip, put up a sign: "Free Kitty Litter" and it will go.
Cheers, Steve

[Jedo_03]

Ironic that woodies protest about timber coys ripping trees down and turning them into pulp - yet do the same thing themselves (albeit on a smaller scale) - but at least the commercial pulp is used for something.

Our little city council have a mobile shredder (sure a lot of other councils would have, too) and any street trees that come down, or are thinned down under the 'lectric wires, are shredded and taken to an area in the dump (Waste Recycling Facility) and "composted", then recycled.
Personally, my timber by-product is loaded onto the trailer and deposited in this area of the dump.
I wouldn't dream of dumping my household garbage and kitchen scraps over the back fence, (or over someone else's back fence) and the same goes for my sawdust, shavings and shed rubbish.
Other thing is, shavings and sawdust spread over soil actually depletes the soil of nitrogen (nitrogen draw) which is then not available to the existing plants and vegetation - so anyone who "dumps" shavings onto vegetation areas is actually damaging our fragile environment...
Jedo

[rsser]

See if any of your neighbours, partic the vegie gardeners, want it for mulch.

Small quantities can go into a compost bin along with vegie scraps. Authorities seem to differ on the advisability of this but it works for me.

I scatter most of mine on the lawn and it rots down pretty quickly. If it depletes the soil and cuts down grass growth no complaints here ;-}

[soundman]

Yeh Yeh wood shavings ruin the soil......That is a bit of a generalisation.

It depends on what wood shavings and what you do to & with them.

Shavings can cause nitrogen draw down.... but so can any dry vegative mulch.... thats why you furtilise when you mulch.
AND this nitrogen draw down only occurs IF the matter gets a chance to break down........ which is the single biggest problem.

If you just pile up saw dust and wood shavings dry it will just sit there and look at you for years. It is sterile, dry, insulated and anerobic.

If you expect it to rot down you need to help it along.
You can disapear large quantities into regularly dug garden beds like vegitable gardens and the like as long as you dig it in in reasonable quantities and you apply some furtiliser ( preferably manure) at the same time.

A friend of min with a stair case joinery has benn using shaving in his vegy gardens for years and grows great vegies.

dig it in with lots of manure and in 4 to 6 weeks you will have a hard time finding it... as long as the bed is moist.
Diuspersed, with good soil contact and added manure and a bit of moisture, gives the fastest and most usefull result.

A great partner for wood shavings is chook manure, (the fresher the better, if getting you shavings to decompose is your aim) fresh cook manure is "excessivly hot" and rich in nitrogen but contains no organic matter available for further decomposition, wood shavings contains little or no nitrogen.
If shaving break down is your objective arround 50 /50 shavings and chook manure is reasonable, more or less will still be effective.

mushroom compost is also excessivly hot and wood shavings can be used as an extender and buffer for that too.

Mixing other organic matter like grass clippings, leaves and so forth in with the mix is always helpfull.
Remember one secret of good compost is variety, the more different things in you heap the better it will work.
It probaly helps too if you turn the heap once in a while.

Another problem with wood shavings is acidity, for various reasons there can be acididity associated with wood shaving decomposition. Products of decomposition and tannins in the wood are two factors. A very generous application of dolimite at the same time as laying down the shavings can help here.

shavings with lots of aromatic "stuff" in them like camphor or some of the pines need to be spread thinner than other stuff, so the soil, air, water and manure can deal with the aromatics, mixing with less whiffy shavings is probaly a good idea.
Same with woods with a lot of tannin in them.

Yes you can dispose of large amounts of sawdust, wood shavings in your garden, quite usefully, but you have to help it along.
If you just dump it there it will sit there looking at you for ages AND make a problem of its self to boot.

I have a couple of " research projects" underway involving large amounts of sawdust / wood shavings at the moment. Once they progress a bit further I'll post some pictures.

cheers

[rsser]

Useful info Soundman.

Yeah, sawdust is harder to mulch than shavings; it tends to cake.

[soundman]

Useful info Soundman.

Yeah, sawdust is harder to mulch than shavings; it tends to cake.

Yep Yep Yep. and once it is caked up you won't even get water into it.

try mixing it 50 /50 with dirt......even that is better.

cheers

[soundman]

Just checked on research project #1
the compost heap
its a circle of besser bricks about 6' round and about 8 bessers high (5' ish).
I contains mostly sawdust off Exador's mill, with a good helping of cook manure, mushroom compost and seived poor dirt off the ground.
I added some dolamite from the top and watered it about once a month with water from our sulliage tank.
It was laid by shoveling in layers. Its been down about 3 months and hasn't been turned.
I just took a trowel to the top to have a look, once you get past the crusty top inch, its quite moist and getting on quite nicely, lots of little worms and has a sort of potting mix texture to it.
it was filled to the top and has subsided about the height of 1 besser.

I'll probaly start pile #2 in about a month and pull this one down & use the contents.

project #2
the banana patch is much fresher nad has some of Exador's mill dropping and some kwila & durian dust & shavings in it, with chook manure, mushroom compost and lots of dolamite still looks like sawdist but the potatoes & put in ther about a month ago are up and looking lush, the bananas are still looking shabby from the cold. But I recon they'll come away in a month or so.

cheers

[OGYT]

The ag class instructor in our high school gets a lot of mine to use as bedding for the animals that are penned outside of town... sheep, pigs, some other show animals.
The rest I put around my trees and grape vines for mulch to hold moisture. Never had a problem yet.
Our radio station broadcasts some short public service announcements... one of 'em being, "free mulch, call number_______."

[AlexS]

I use mine for mulch, give some to neighbours and mix some with other vegie matter in the compost heap.

As a mulch, it depletes only the top couple of mm, and stops weeds pretty well.
Might give it a try as kitty litter. Cat's p!ss has plenty of nitrogen in it, so perhaps it could then be dug in as a fertilizer?

[OGYT]

Cat stuff is bad for vegie growin', cause somethin' in it's harmful to humans, and doesn't go away in the compostin'.... what I've heard, anyway. Any ideas on this??

[Manuka Jock]

I take some of mine to work and chuck it in the skip with all the other wood waste .
I put a small amount out with the rubbish , 'cos the worms at the dump gotta eat too. :)
And when I get a bit better organised , I'll take it out to my brother's place .
He raises, trains , and races trotters and pacers , so my relatively small amount would hardly carpet one stable yard .
Mixed with horse manure the public love it :2tsup:
If I had my own place I would put Soundman's ideas into action .
Besser bricks are concrete blocks , right :?

cheers ,
Jock

[wheelinround]

Give it to the better half tell her its that large diamond she always wanted.....but she has to wait a few hundred years for decomposition into coal then compression and heat to form it

Just run like hell and duck for cover:D:D

[Allan at Wallan]

I have never smoked in my life but perhaps
you could try the shavings and let me know what the effects are.:D

Up to date I have given all my shavings to the bloke next door who
breeds those whopping big white rabbits. Claims it keeps them
warm in the Winter.

Allan.

_______________________________________________

I am not at all worried about dying
... but just hope I am not there at the time.

[greenwood]

i use my sawdust as footpaths , just lay it straight on the mud ,cheap and effective .also ideal in the chook pens the chooks lay wooden logs for the fire :roll:

[Touchwood]

Here in the WA sand, I use all I can get (neighbour is a carpenter and gives me all of his too) on paths that I walk horses on. Their hooves chew up the surface badly, but a thick layer of mixture from extractors helps bind and prevent erosion.

The chook yard (as mentioned by others) also gets its fair share under the roosts and in the laying boxes.

JD

[Manuka Jock]

I have never smoked in my life but perhaps
you could try the shavings and let me know what the effects are.:D

Up to date I have given all my shavings to the bloke next door who
breeds those whopping big white rabbits. Claims it keeps them
warm in the Winter.

Allan.

_______________________________________________

I am not at all worried about dying
... but just hope I am not there at the time.

They roast up ok ? :p

[thefixer]

Worm farms is the answer. I gave a heap of lathe shavings to a mate of mine for his worm farm and he reckons they are the biggest worms he has ever seen after only a few months. Also good for nesting material for bird breeders.

Cheers
Shorty

[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

Heat the shed! (http://sleekfreak.ath.cx:81/3wdev/VITAHTML/SUBLEV/EN1/SAWDSTOV.HTM)

I'm rather peeved that I converted mine into a separator for the DC now. :doh:

[echnidna]

I used to burn a lot when I was in production.
Easy to get a 44 gln drum glowing red hot in daylight.
Don't think I'd chance using a shed heater with such light gauge metal.

[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

It's a 20gal inside a 44gal. :)

Fuelled once at firing, then sealed and left alone until burnt out. The only safe way to burn sawdust at home, unless you want to spend a brazillian dollars...

[Sebastiaan56]

Thanks everyone, there are a lot of solutions, and good food for thought.

Skew, love it, wish I had room.

We have a BD backyard and yes, BD compost preparations do make the best compost, bar none. New chooks will come in spring, now the drought is breaking up maybe the wood shavings will as well. Never had a problem with shavings (or anything for that matter) robbing nitrogen, just get the boys to pee wherever you need nitrogen.

Now how about the left field, no recipes for sausages (Nth Korean style) ?? What about as kiln fuel for potters kilns?, pomanders? Car smeller upperers?, or linen closet moth scaring thingys?, home made organic MDF?, camping pillows? or insulation? thin fragile expensive carvings? (think trembleur with attitude). Im sure we can do better than compost,

Sebastiaan

[rsser]

Good thinking Seb'n.

Stuff your pillow with some and let us know how you go :U

Scatter Camphor Laurel around a Zegna suit ... should work to keep the moths away. Anyone got Paul Keating's address ... let's send him some :roll:

What about an aromatic mix of shavings to smoke a fish in the Webber?

.... my award goes to Skew's link to a burner.

There's a stove in Four Mile hut outside Kiandra. Special model to stop huts burning down ... no ash tray or the like to start it off. Has a flue and in front a venturi to draw the air down on your carefully piled pyramid of twigs. I got nowhere with it, despite a generous splash of Shellite. Just exploded and lifted the cast-iron venturi some inches off the top :oo: But my mate managed the trick and we had a couple of hours of kinda modest warmth before turning in.

Got to -14 that night. Leather cross-country ski boots frozen. Baby carrots and radishes (fresh food treat for the trip) turned to glass. ... old memories always rosy in retrospect :B

[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

Just in case anyone's considering building a sawdust burner from that link, there's one change I've found that makes a big difference.

At the bottom of the flue, instead of a 90° bend into the drum, install a T-piece with the "spare" end pointing down and capped off. Then, when lighting the beast, remove the cap and start a small fire with some paper/kindling under the T. This starts the flue drawing and circulates the air in the drum, making the beast light sooo much more quickly. :2tsup:

Liquid accelerants are not recommended as starting assists... DAMHIKT. Suffice it to say that there is a timbre of *FOOMP* that still brings me close to brown-trousers time, even when I'm not the culprit! :B

[rsser]

LOL ... 'Foomp' captures it nicely ;-} Must've been 10kg of cast iron. Foomp and jump ... erk. Leastways nothing outside that stove was going to burn that night. (Side note .. at those temps your breath condensed and rained back down on you. You woke up, repeatedly btw, wondering whether you'd been dribbling :- .)

... now really OT: the hut had been built by one of the gold mine managers in the area. When the seam ran out he stayed working solo. When the hut was restored back around the 70s I think it was the volunteers found a box of gelly sticks still there. Apparently unstable stuff, they lowered it into the pit privy ... :doh: ... could have given new meaning to the term 'thunder box' :o

[hughie]

LOL ... 'Foomp' captures it nicely ;-}


what I call the KFB factor.... heart stopping stuff :U

[cedar n silky]

Chooks, that's the answer!:D 6 hens, and a chook run. Chuck in your vege scraps and the wood shavings (oh, and of course the stuff that comes out of the chooks rear end- and I don't mean eggs!), and let the chooks do all the work!
Nice compost at the end, and eggs to boot!:2tsup:

[Hickory]

Compost pile is the best answer I can come up with. I bag mine from the DC and carry them to my daughter's property (7 acres) and deposit in the woods as grown cover to smother weeds and compost back to nature. Likely as not her neighbor will stop me and have me deposit in his cattle lot to suck up the mud. A little bother on my part but my attempt to help mother nature do her job. If I had a space for it, I would keep mine in a compost pile and grow some rich soil in a few years. I know you sometimes produce more than can rot to keep up. but a pile is a pile and so just pile it up.

[Manuka Jock]

How about about a system that sucks up the shavings and shoots them into the stove .......

:hpydans2: