Anyone have a briquette maker?

[flanajb]

Whilst trying to dispose of my shaving it got me thinking that there must be lots of others just like me who generate wood shavings / dust. And as my Dad used to say to me "Where there's muck there's brass". Ok, wood shavings are not muck, but you not what I mean.

So given the Wife could do with helping with the home finances I came up with the equation

Wife + dust/shavings + briquette press = ££

Just wanted to ask whether anyone on hear has a briquette machine or can comment on whether my equation has potential.

I have run the idea past Wife and she has already confirmed; Wife + dust/shavings + briquette press != divorce

Could also combine selling kindling as well. I seem to enjoy the recycling concept and trying to make use of other people's rubbish. A trip up to your recycling center should be enough evidence on just how much we throw away

 

[Phil Pascoe]

The main problem with bricquettes is that they are full of water - you need somewhere warm, dry and airy to dry them. This takes weeks and can't be done in your 'shop, obviously. I found them more trouble than they're worth, although I have a pot belly stove in my 'shop, which tends to make them redundant anyway - all the crap goes straight in.

 

[flanajb]

The main problem with bricquettes is that they are full of water - you need somewhere warm, dry and airy to dry them. This takes weeks and can't be done in your 'shop, obviously. I found them more trouble than they're worth, although I have a pot belly stove in my 'shop, which tends to make them redundant anyway - all the rubbish goes straight in.

But if they are produced from shavings that originated from Kiln dried timber, then surely the moisture content of the end product == that of the starting shavings?

Given the huge pressures involved in making a briquette, I would have thought that any moisture in the shavings would be compressed out?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Sorry, I was thinking about the presses used for compressed newspaper (which, of course, you can fill with anything else). These use saturated newspaper.

 

[flanajb]

Sorry, I was thinking about the presses used for compressed newspaper (which, of course, you can fill with anything else). These use saturated newspaper.

Given how many discarded newspapers I see on the tube / train every day that could be an even better idea!

Would certainly keep the Wife busy. I reckon she would have to be doing 17 hr days just to get through a single carriages worth

 

[Phil Pascoe]

You'd need to process one hell of a lot to pay for the divorce!

 

[Hardwood66]

I have a small one works well takes about 2 weeks to dry out in the green house and they burn for about an hour

 

[acewoodturner]

A proper briquette maker is about 10k plus vat and that is at the cheap end. You would have to sell a lot of them to make it pay for itself or have a large workshop creating lots of shavings to burn in the workshop to reduce your heating bill. Where it would be good is in the warm summer months where you dont have the stove on and dont have the space to store bags of shavings like my workshop. My mate buys them occasionally for his stove at his house and he says they burn for ages with very liitle ash. You have to use shavings with moisture content of between something like 8 and 15% max. You can wreck the mechanism if your moisture content is too high because you are trying to compress water which cant be compressed. I dont know why they are all so expensive as I am sure that someone could come up with something just as effective for a lot less money. They are quite simple and basically all work on the same principles/design.

Mike

 

[ColeyS1]

Unless youre making shed loads of shavings, i doubt you'd make millions from it. Its the convenience of it that made us decide to get one. Two of us use to spend a few hours every couple of weeks finding a local farmer who would let us dump it. It use to pee us off no end, im sure the farmer got a bit fed up come the end.
A quick word of caution if you do decide to get one. Our first one was nothing but hassle- looked like a flat rectangle with a steel bin on top. The diameter of the drum was so small that the agitator would only loosen the stuff right at the bottom- you'd have to baby sit it and give it the occasional wallop to loosen the rest. That one went wrong 4-5 times. In the end we found out it was a faulty machine/ entire batch.
Our second machine came from axminster and is still going strong (250 + hrs) today - it was also much cheaper then ;-)


sent from my mobile using fat fingers

 

[adidat]

this is amazing!!

http://woodgears.ca/reader/alois/press.html

quite complicated but a genius idea

adidat

 

[Tony Spear]

Sorry, I was thinking about the presses used for compressed newspaper (which, of course, you can fill with anything else). These use saturated newspaper.

Given how many discarded newspapers I see on the tube / train every day that could be an even better idea!

Would certainly keep the Wife busy. I reckon she would have to be doing 17 hr days just to get through a single carriages worth

Many, many years ago, when these things were "trendy", a Journalist i knew (Richard Boston) wrote an article, either for The Grauniad or a short-lived eco-magazine called Vole about his experiences with one and he told me that it took him about a week to collect enough newspapers to make one briquette! :wink:

 

[Tony Spear]

Sorry, I was thinking about the presses used for compressed newspaper (which, of course, you can fill with anything else). These use saturated newspaper.

Given how many discarded newspapers I see on the tube / train every day that could be an even better idea!

Would certainly keep the Wife busy. I reckon she would have to be doing 17 hr days just to get through a single carriages worth

 

[flanajb]

Unless youre making shed loads of shavings, i doubt you'd make millions from it. Its the convenience of it that made us decide to get one. Two of us use to spend a few hours every couple of weeks finding a local farmer who would let us dump it. It use to pee us off no end, im sure the farmer got a bit fed up come the end.
A quick word of caution if you do decide to get one. Our first one was nothing but hassle- looked like a flat rectangle with a steel bin on top. The diameter of the drum was so small that the agitator would only loosen the stuff right at the bottom- you'd have to baby sit it and give it the occasional wallop to loosen the rest. That one went wrong 4-5 times. In the end we found out it was a faulty machine/ entire batch.
Our second machine came from axminster and is still going strong (250 + hrs) today - it was also much cheaper then ;-)


sent from my mobile using fat fingers

What about if you collected shavings / dust for free from local businesses and had the thing running 8 hrs / day. Given the specs of the machine you could create 400 - 800kg of briquettes / day

Based on current briquette prices of ~ £4 for a 10kg bag you could turn that into either £160 or £320 depending on the spec of the press you purchased.

By the time you have purchased the machine at ~ 20k and the rent of the workshop / power consumption of the unit it would not be a seiously economical business venture.

 

[Gerard Scanlan]

You could use it to smoke a whole wagon load of fish and bacon

 

[stoatyboy]

i was at aboot fair the other week and saw guy with a bunch of sacks of briquttes from shavings he was selling

had a chat he has a joinery firm and they produce too many to use in their heater so trying to sell some

suspect the markets for small scale outlets are not too easy if you feel the urge to have a go at a boot fair (good luck to him though) i think people who buy the stoves that can handle this sort of fuel already have ready access to the fuel in the first place - which is why they bought the stove/boiler/heater

there is a massive market for biomass fuels but you need to be producing thousands of tonnes of the stuff to access them

 

[acewoodturner]

quite a lot of tree surgeons sell firewood as a means of getting rid of logs and making some money at the same time. It could be a goodpartnership to tie in with a firewood reseller to access a bigger market. A lot of the joinery/ kitchen oufitters etc who have enormous outputs of shavings and sawdust sell their waste to the likes of Norbord or Egger to make MDF and chipboard. Where they would nmake more money though is investing in a woodburning heater system to heat the whole of their plant instead of using gas or electricity. Check out Talbotts for further info. There is good money available for grants for changinging over your heating system and as gas and electricty are rocketing upwards you save even more money.

 

[Hardwood66]

Oi sell mine for 30p each and next door buy everything I can maker here's the next load

 

[brianhabby]

Would be interested to see how you make those

regards

Brian

 

[adidat]

i think hardwood uses something like this

this looks like a better idea though :wink: :mrgreen:

adidat

 

[Allylearm]

To be blunt you are competing with big producers of waste here (it was all the rage to solve industries ongoing problems of getting rid of the sawdust), the total cost to set up would be nearer £20k with packaging/labeling/receptical to hold your waste prior to pressing. Then you have marketing/transport and you want to make a living. Last time I looked in a pet shop they were selling a compacted bag for rabbits etc at a £5 retail. I am not the biggest producer of waste but I can generate two 45ft containers per week depending on what going through the mill. Can you compete even with me as once you have a market you must supply there needs weekly etc. As customers are a fickle mob who want supplied when they want not when you have it. What about storing cost both for waste and made products, there is new SEPA control measures coming out regarding extraction and wood chip disposal. It is going to affect a lot more wood waste producers than currently (you needed to buy a 1000cube of timber before you needed the licence), this means a cost of your application, local planning permission and be charged for your inspections by SEPA and COSHH testing costs along with Servicing planning.

Like others I have tried varied methods to get rid of the stuff over the years. At present I have settled on selling my waste to a sawdust supplier for £100 per 45ft container who sells it on to Farmers for cattle bedding and when I have certain hardwoods to fish smokers and the like. My general wood waste is denailed etc and sent via 40 yard skips to local council recycling centre. They have the licence/transport/trailer cost along with labour. And they have to find their market. at this time my best solution.

If prices of skips gets much higher it may be worth my while going to burn my general wood waste or chip and sell to previous buyer but I would need to invest in skips/chipper as my wood waste extraction is sealed system. Again it's down to cost's and how much you produce weekly.