Wood supply

How many pound do you think you chunked up?
Sweet free fuel to drive on. Ch-cing, Ch-ching in your wallet that is not paying out on the drive to work.
Bob

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Just a guess maybe 5-600lbs, but it’s all very wet right now. Pouring rain all day and night while it was in the bed of the Dodge

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The good thing about wood is that it will dry out in time. Monies in the wood savings bank. Have you ever thought how much free monies is in front of you laying on the ground, scrap wood no one wants that has fuel equally able to run your truck as gasoline. It is a wood $$$$$$ gold mine in wood fuel and it is free. With a little of our sweat and labor. Get rid of the gym membership what a waste of money. Right?
What is the price of fuel at the gas station now?
Bob

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I passed several stations over 5$/gallon for gas, I saw 6$ gallon for diesel. Thank God work payed this one to fill up my service truck, it has its own fuel card Wood is my fuel card :grin:

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Back in 2008 I would drive the company’s operation truck. Over 100 plus miles on a 12 hour shift going the the remote hydro power houses for daily inspections and driving around on the big hydro project.
But it was a 130 miles round trip to the job and back home commute for me. Ouch.
Glad I never had to pay $5.00 a gallon back then. I retired March 28th 2008 just before the gas hike pushed it to $5.00 a gallon.
You are Blessed with having a company truck and they fill it.
I cut a deal with the Grant County PUD utility when I would go and inspect the Quincy Chute hydro power plant. They would let me drive my vehicle to that plant to inspect it. It was half way home to Wenatchee. So I would to go there and leave from there at the end of my shift. Got home early by 50 minutes. So you could say I was driving home on the company’s time and got $0.40 mile for using my vehicle. Sweet.
Bob

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It does not go so fast, but is not so hard either, to make firewood.

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I asked my wife. She confirmed that when you are working with wood fast is seldom best.

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The way I see it, if you can produce more than you consume at a time then you’re working fast.

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It didn’t look like the machine was slow. It looked like there was too much delay from the operator. It could be solved by making the arm go up and down automatically, and eliminate the operator.

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Someday I’m going to build me a firewood processor…

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At the old engine show they annually have in this area, naturally most stuff is run off steam. They have a saw mill and make fuel for the boilers off the slabs. Two guys. One hoists slabs onto a table and keeps feeding the stock forward and the other pulls a big circular blade down. Chunks drop into a bin that gets swapped out when full. They probably cut four or five cubic yards and hour. I believe Jan’s chain blade is much safer if slower.

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You may already know, but you can mix sawdust with vegetable oil. While this guy is just burning it, it might work as a binder for bricks with a bit of compression. I don’t know. He briefly mentions motor oil too.

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Yes, thanks. That is how I got rid of my wast motoroil in the Atmos. Had some mechanical problems last year with the Kubota and the forklift.

With pellets it helps a little, but biggest problem is the continuous proces. If you want to make pellets the most important factors:
moisture
partical size
heat of the die
continuous feed
cooling and seeving

And it that order.

Briquettes are easier and dont have to be produces in a continuous way. But still there is a lot of power needed. Around 2.5% of the energy available in the wood is consumed by making pellets/briquttes. Not counted for the shredder etc etc. If you count it all together there is not much left. Via the other side, 1 kW produces 10 kg of pellets. You cant leave, have to stay with the machine. 1 kg pellets cost around $0.20. Minimum press to function a little whitout to much hassle is 7,5 kW, that gives 75 kg and equals $€15. If a bearing breakes you put money into the game. And believe me, I broke some.

So, charcoal or wood is best. Or free sawdust, that wont get out of my mind.

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He was just using sawdust soaked in oil, wrapped up like a burrito in newspaper. But he briefly mentioned a briquette, although I am not sure I would want to store oil soaked sawdust in a briquette and not store it in a fireproof container. Unless it is compressed it probably wouldn’t be that useful for a gasifier, but maybe. i Just thought of you when that popped up on my youtube stream. :stuck_out_tongue: I was thinking briquette like just a shop press in a pipe mold nothing fancy, but it is extra work/energy. And it is probably better for heating applications like he is using it.

It ends up to be like the firestarters that you get for starting a fire, I think those are sawdust and paraffin.

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I am forever annoyed looking at that wood splitter just sitting they doing nothing for 10 months a year. I thought about finding a way to adapt the ram to press vegetable or seed oils but never did anything about it. However it would be much easier to fill a pipe with the sawdust/oil mix and compact it with the ram, push it out and cut it into whatever size fuel you were using and then refill it for another run.

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My father always told me, that firewood should warm you at least twice. This machine rob you of one heating cycle :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Kamil, we also have such a proverb, firewood warms and strengthens you, you just can’t do without a good cook.:grinning:

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Apropos of nothing here but did you ever wonder what kind of person thinks it’s better to walk on a treadmill for exercise instead of taking a stroll in nature?

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I have never understood those people Tom
Think this can go in the wood supply
https://youtu.be/SXWvp-UjUYk

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The wood on top will dry first in the pile. I built 2 1/2’ to 3’ diameter wire silos cages and stacked them together so the air can circulate all a round them the wood will dry a lot quicker then in a big pile on the concrete floor. To get the wood out you just have to tip one silo cage over and start shoveling from the bottom. The silos are 4’ tall in the cage, you can make them shorter if you want. Not to bad for shoveling in from the top.
I want to build a conver belt to lift the wood into the silos I have built.
Lots of fun things to do when you get into wood gasification. Right.
Bob

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