Partners of woodworkers unite!
Sawdust Is Man Glitter
How to cope with a partner who loves woodworking
It’s everywhere now. The wood shop is ankle-deep in sawdust, dust particles cloud the air inside, and the rafters are so loaded that even the spiders have moved out. Inside the woodshed are fresh-cut planks drying, bins of scrap wood bits, feedbags and containers of every imaginable kind overflowing with wood chips and slivers and no end of a dusty, sneezy mess everywhere.
I am reminded of my youth back on our Virginia farm after logging operations were completed and the old sawmill sprang into action, creating mega-mountains of sawdust. My mom warned us kids not to play in the sawdust piles –– as tempting as it was –– because, she said, they’re on fire inside.
Well, whatever Mom told us not to do was the first thing to get out there and get into, and being the oldest I could always blame my kid brother. Personally I never dug deeply enough into one –– a sawdust pile, not a brother –– to find that raging inferno inside, but I was blessed with good karma.
I now know that the internal heat from decay and fermentation can cause spontaneous combustion under the right circumstances. It’s relatively rare, but if you ever spot a column of smoke rising from a sawdust pile (or a kid brother, for that matter), please dial 911!
The only thing likely to spontaneously combust around here these days would be me. But fortunately for everybody, I’ve found plenty of ways to use up all that “waste” wood! Here are just a few:
Fireplace. Coniferous trees are loaded with terpenes, the main component of that intoxicating “piney” scent of old-growth evergreen forests. Terpenes are highly flammable (think “turpentine”), and wood scrap from cedar, pine, Douglas fir, and the like, makes excellent kindling, no matter the size and shape. I use it every bit. I just light a match and FOOMPFF!
And speaking of fireplaces…
Fire starters. Sometimes when the firewood is damp or otherwise hard to get started, I give it a boost with homemade fire starters, made from old candles and sawdust, usually from western cedar. These are super easy to make, and one small chunk will ignite even the most stubborn log.
Here’s our recipe with detailed directions:
Wood Chips for Chickens. There was no life on this little farm before chickens. We keep a small flock of hens, mainly for entertainment, but sometimes the lazy slackers actually give us enough eggs to share with the neighbors.
The girls are much happier and productive when their feet are dry and they have lots of interesting things to peck at, so we oblige by chipping up branches and other wood bits that can’t be used for anything else.
The beauty of this is how effortless it is to delight our chooks. A tractor-load of chips dumped in a huge pile in the chicken run sets the girls into a frenzy, pecking, scratching, clucking, and having a blast until the chips are evenly dispersed throughout the entire 50-foot run. Just the way they like it.
Vegetable Garden and Landscaping Mulch. There’s enough weeding to be done without having to be concerned with what’s outside the veggie beds! A layer of landscape cloth covered with a couple inches of chipped wood does the trick.
Sometimes I’ll let the chickens in to spread the chips around for me. But first they insist I stop calling them lazy slackers.
So, for you partners of woodworkers out there, rejoice! A little sawdust, some wood scrap, kindling, and maybe even a beautiful new piece of furniture now and then are just a few of the benefits of having a woodworker as a roommate. And in these forced stay-at-home days, if he’s got a project that keeps him happily occupied, so much the better. ❤
Thanks for reading! And thank you, Betsy Leuner, for the most perfect photo!
