Having access to large amounts of wood waste, for example, from furniture production or a carpentry workshop, an entrepreneurial owner wonders what can be made of sawdust. The answer will depend on how exactly he wants to use them. In the presence of artistic talents, sawdust and shavings can be an excellent material for the embodiment of creative ideas. And if you have a private house, a summer residence or a livestock farm, then wood waste will be an excellent help in the garden or in the garden, on the farm or in the chicken coop.
Businessmen can be advised to engage in the production of fuel or building briquettes. Useful tips and ideas for a private business you will learn from the article. In it, we will look at simple examples of what you can do from sawdust with your own hands at home.
Litter in livestock
Sawdust and fine chips perfectly absorb moisture and biological waste. They are poured on the floor by cows, pigs, horses and other domestic animals. According to farmers, too small sawdust is harder to clean, but they absorb liquids better. And large sawdust and shavings do a poor job, and they need to be laid on the surface with a large layer. Therefore, it is advised to make the mixture.
The best thing you can do from sawdust for a quality bedding is to add a little fermentation material to the mixture. They remove unpleasant odors and even generate heat, which will save fuel for heating in the cold season.
Use for gardens
Let's look at what can be done from sawdust. Gardeners have long used them to mulch trees, sprinkling circles around them. It is also convenient to cover the soil in vegetable gardens and greenhouses with sawdust and small shavings. They protect it from freezing, help maintain moisture after watering. Also, the litter on the ground prevents weeds from germinating, and a dry crust does not form on the surface of the soil. Thus, land compaction does not occur, and this is of great importance for the qualitative growth of garden and berry crops.
A layer of sawdust in the area reduces the effect of cold air on the roots, prevents the wind and water from leaching beneficial nutrients from the soil layers.
Now you know what can be made from sawdust, but there is one small secret. It is best to use stale shavings for farming, because otherwise they will slowly mineralize and may at the same time spend a lot of nutrients from the ground, thereby taking them away from garden plants and acidifying the soil. It is advisable to give them pre-reheat in a compost pit, sometimes turning them over with a shovel. In this case, sawdust can be strewed onto the surface of flower beds and even in pots with indoor flowers. They will only fertilize the earth, and the plants will yield a greater yield.
It is interesting!
What can be done from sawdust and shavings, the inhabitants of North America came up with. In Guatemala, there is a place called Antigua, where Easter is celebrated every year. For Holy Week, a huge number of believers gather in the village who come from all over the country to see the bright processions and interesting performances of long-standing events that happened with Jesus Christ.
Right on the streets of the city, anyone can take part in an extraordinary action, namely, create on the road a carpet of sawdust painted in different colors. They are carefully sifted, stencils are made, and sometimes canvases are laid under the drawing. Some add real flowers and green leaves of plants to carpet patterns.
Prepare for the procession of believers 12 hours before it begins. Subsequently, the whole ceremony moves through the streets, stepping on these works of art. Some make such carpets in their yard or even in an apartment. Through drawings and ornaments, people convey their religious feelings.
Material for papier mache
We are all used to the fact that traditional papier-mâché is made of paper, but if you think about what can be made of sawdust, the answer will be the same papier-mâché. To create a thick mass, fine material is selected and PVA glue is added to it. After thorough kneading, a dense plastic consistency is obtained, which is perfectly molded.
From it you can make masks and small sculptures on a solid foundation. After hardening, this papier-mâché is quite strong, it can be painted with acrylics and varnished.
Woodpaste Crafts
What you can do with PVA glue and sawdust, you already understand, but you need to know the exact recipes for making wood paste for sculpting, so that the figures and other crafts are durable and do not crumble after drying.
Let's consider some of them:
- 2 tbsp. sawdust, 1 tbsp. wheat flour, the same amount of starch, a teaspoon of PVA and 1 cup of cold water. Mix all dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Dissolve the glue in water and gradually pour into the remaining components, constantly stirring.
- 2 cups of fine sawdust from under the saw, 1 cup of wallpaper glue, mixed in the same amount of water. For complete dissolution, you will have to wait 10 minutes. Then mix everything with sawdust, but not immediately, but adding the liquid in parts, while stirring all the time.
After making a dense mass, you can sculpt crafts like plasticine. To dry, cover the work with a cloth and leave it in a dry place for a day. Do not expose to the open sun to prevent cracks. If the work is voluminous, turn it from side to side several times to dry evenly from all sides.
Decorating dishes
Let's see what else can be made of sawdust. The dishes on which curly patterns are applied look beautifully, as in the photo below. To make this beauty, sawdust take the smallest, reminiscent of dust. You can proceed in different ways. First, create the necessary pattern on glass or clay using PVA glue with a brush, and sprinkle sawdust on top of it. Lightly press down the pattern with a napkin or directly with your hand, and pour extra sawdust onto the surface of the table.
It can be done differently. First mix in a container a couple of spoons of PVA with sawdust, having achieved the consistency of sour cream, and with a brush apply strips to the object of creativity. Do not forget that all the drawings are done only on the front side, if you want to use the dishes in the future.
Registration of a summer residence
Knowing the recipes for making wood pulp and having several molds, you can make decorative tiles to decorate the walls or floor of a house on a personal plot. Such a design technique will be the answer to the question of what can be done with sawdust in the country. After all, agree that the same tiles will look beautiful both on the wall and on the floor of the room.
With their help, by the way, you can update the surface of an old table or cabinet, putty with a mass of holes or crevices in the floor and on the furniture. Using small sawdust with the addition of chips or shavings from different species of wood, you can diversify the appearance of your work.
Briquettes for space heating
In connection with the latest trends in the rise in price of various types of fuel for heating, many are wondering what can be done from wood chips and sawdust. This is a cheap waste material that will be sold with pleasure for a penny both in private carpentry workshops and in furniture factories that are not involved in the manufacture of chipboard.
You can, of course, use ordinary sawdust, pouring them into the boiler. They will also produce heat, but the efficiency will be much lower. Therefore, some entrepreneurs are pressing them into briquettes. If desired, you can do them at home, using a homemade press. On an industrial scale in production, such fuel briquettes are made on granulators. It is important in your household to select sawdust of the same consistency, you can add 10% clay, mix all this with water and dry the mass in the sun. Briquettes can be squeezed out through a manual press, or can be laid out in small molds. In any case, they will give an excellent thermal effect on cold winter days.
What can be done and sold from sawdust
A beautiful warm and light house is obtained from the so-called wood concrete. Some have not even heard of such material, but arbolite blocks have been used for a long time, several of them were even built at the Antarctic stations. Blocks resemble large bricks that are easy to transport and carry. You can quickly give them any size with a simple saw. Screws are well screwed into the finished walls and nails are hammered, they are warm and breathable, environmentally friendly and strong. Their surface can be plastered, like ordinary bricks.
For the production of arbolite blocks, softwood chips are used, such as pine, fir-tree or fir. Also, good material for the blocks is obtained from chips of poplar, birch and aspen. You can not take only beech and larch!
First, all wood is decontaminated so as not to cause fermentation processes when mixed with water and cement. This may result in voids or swelling of the material. Chemical treatment is carried out using a mixture of calcium chloride with water glass and aluminum sulfate. In addition, chips are additionally treated with an antiseptic to get rid of insects and bacteria.
Only after preliminary preparation for sawdust add plasticizer (1% by weight) and Portland cement (up to 15%). Then the resulting mass is molded and dried for at least 2 days at a temperature of 60 ° C.
As you can see, the use of sawdust can be found in a variety of ways. This is a great material for both creativity and construction and household work.