Sawdust

“ Frosted shingles smoked against a sky colored like flax-blossoms, sleigh-bells clinked, shouts of greeting were loud in the thin bright air, and everywhere was a rhythmic sound of wood-sawing. It was Saturday, and the neighbors' sons were getting up the winter fuel. Behind walls of corded wood in back yards their sawbucks stood in depressions scattered with canary-yellow flakes of sawdust. ”

“ Within Sound of the Saws.
Lumber had gone up, and the big mill on the Aspohegan was working overtime.
Through the range of square openings under the eaves the sunlight streamed in steadily upon the strident tumult, the confusion of sun and shadow, within the mill. The air was sweet with the smell of fresh sawdust and clammy with the ooze from great logs just "yanked" up the dripping slides from the river. One had to pitch his voice with peculiar care to make it audible amid the chaotic din of the saws. ”

“ Conservative estimates place the annual sawdust yield throughout the British Isles at 150,000 tons. Of this gigantic contribution only from 5 to 10 per cent. is drawn from hard woods. The balance, 90 to 95 per cent., [Pg 133] is derived from the soft woods and so furnishes a huge reservoir of potential raw material for paper-making.
Coincident with the accumulation of sawdust are the fabrication of huge piles of wood-slats—the trimmings from the logs. These also represent sheer refuse, the only possible disposal being in the form of fire or kindling wood. ”

“ In making so many new colonies last season, we governed the size of the entrances to exclude robbers, almost entirely with sawdust, and it answered the purpose more completely to our satisfaction, than any other plan we have ever used. Also, when the nights became cool, we banked sawdust clear around the hives, to close the cracks between the hive and bottom board. We are a great friend to sawdust; it keeps down the weeds, gives you a clean place to work, is clean and orderly for a small dooryard for the bees, and enables you to make just such an entrance as you desire. ”

“ The sawdust will not be swept again into such a position under the oil, or the bottle will not break over the sawdust, or the sun will not shine in on them to complete the fatal sum. It is an important fact, however, to know that oiled sawdust, warmed by the sun, will fire in sixteen hours, as it accounts for a number of conflagrations in saw-mills, which never could be traced to any probable cause. ”

“ But, so far as these islands are concerned, and under normal conditions, sawdust can scarcely be regarded as a paper-making material. The quantity available from our sawmills is too meagre to enable the idea to be practised extensively. There is just one chance of placing the development upon a firm footing. ”

“ The former of these two methods is now seldom used except by makers of cheap common safes, who sometimes use clay, ashes, or mould. The evaporating system is generally adopted, and as a rule the absorbent material is common sawdust, with which is mixed ordinary alum, the water of crystallisation in the alum being gradually parted with under the continued heat generated by fire. Mahogany sawdust is preferred, as being less combustible than that of white woods. ”

“ It is a good idea to dye several batches with different greens and browns, and to sift the dried sawdust through a piece of window screen, then a kitchen sieve, to get fine, medium and coarse grades. A different texture can be made by grinding up a 1⁄4′′ wooden dowel (available at hardware stores or lumber companies) in a clean pencil sharpener. When you glue the sawdust—or fine sand—or any other texture to the base, vary the color and the texture. Use some light green and some dark, and add a little brown or tan of a finer texture than the green, to resemble dirt showing through the grass. ”

“ All day a stream of shaggy, brown logs, prodded by pike poles, was swept upward in dripping procession on an endless chain, tossed on iron beds, flung against the saws, rolled on carriers as rough boards to other saws—to edgers, trimmers and planers—and disgorged from the farther end of the mill in a dozen grades of product to be carried to the piling yards and drying sheds. Day and night the smoke from burning sawdust in the huge, stack-like consumer poured upward to the sky. ”

“ Muck.—The use of muck pays in stables, as it is a good absorbent and contains some nitrogen which gains in availability by mixture with manure. Its direct application to land as a fertilizer does not pay the labor bill under ordinary circumstances.
Sawdust.—As a fertilizer, sawdust does not have much value, but serves as an excellent absorbent in stables. Its presence in manure need not cause fear of injury to the soil. When fresh sawdust is applied in large quantity to a sandy soil, the effect upon physical condition is bad, increasing drouthiness. ”

“ Most of our State Forests and Waters nurseries in their seedling beds, plant their seedlings, including chestnuts, make a mixture of sawdust and sand, about one of sawdust and two of sand, and then broadcast that right over their seeds. The seeds are broadcast on the firm soil, then this mixture of sawdust and sand is broadcast over the seeds. That gives a uniform planting of your seeds and gives a very nice protection. There is one place that I think sawdust works very nicely.
Straw mulch, any material of that kind, in breaking down takes nitrogen from the soil. ”

“ Aside from a few boards and the sawdust that had been burned, the loss was small. There was no loss in the sawdust, for it was of no use. Some farmers living near by used to come to get a load or two to fill their ice houses, but the remainder was allowed to rot in the forest.
After the fire was over Mr. Martin and Tod Everett, the foreman, began asking how it had started. No one had really seen the first tiny blaze begin, but it was thought that sparks from the smoke stack of the sawmill must have started it. ”

“ The silt settled and dried, and almost immediately thereafter a squatter took possession of the Sawdust Pile. Across the neck of the little promontory, and in line with extreme high-water mark on each side, he erected a driftwood fence; he had a canvas, driftwood, and corrugated-iron shanty well under way when Hector McKaye appeared on the scene and bade him a pleasant good-morning. ”

“ Another influence to which roots are very sensitive is that of moisture. This is strikingly exhibited in an experiment devised by Sachs. Seeds are made to germinate in a layer of moist sawdust, contained in a sieve-like framework, and this suspended obliquely as shown in Fig. 5. The young roots grow directly downward through the loose mass and out through the meshes of the sieve, when, instead of continuing vertically, they bend toward the moisture which comes from the sawdust and keep close to the inclined surface in spite of gravity. ”

“ A Leghorn will do as much mischief in a garden in five minutes as anything we know of.
Sawdust in Rough Casting.
Siehr recommends very highly the use of sawdust in mortar as superior even to hair for the prevention of cracking and subsequent peeling off of rough casting under the action of storms and frost. His own house, exposed to prolonged storms on the seacoast, had patches of mortar to be renewed each spring, and after trying without effect a number of substances to prevent it, he found sawdust perfectly satisfactory. ”

“ The floor may be slabs, and the roof a covering of brush to hold the packing to its place, if a slab roof is not readily made. If sawdust is used for packing, the crevices between the logs will need close stopping; or, still better, it can be faced on the inside with slabs set upright, with the smooth side inward. If straw is employed, the rough logs may remain, and the crevices between them may be left open. For sawdust a well-packed space of 10 inches between walls and ice will keep the ice well; chopped straw should be 15 or 20 inches thick, and long straw should occupy a space of 2 feet. ”

“ In Germany, according to the Polytechnic Review, sawdust is employed in the production of sundry articles both useful and ornamental. A plastic mass is prepared, composed two-thirds of hard-wood sawdust and one-third glue, resin, or other binding material. ”

“ SAWDUST MAKES GOOD FRUIT TREE MULCH Many kinds of material ranging from paper to glass wool have been used as mulches for fruit trees, discloses J. H. Gourley, of the Department of Horticulture at The Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station. Straw, hay, and orchard mowings have been most commonly used.
In some areas, sawdust and shavings are available in quantity and have been used to some extent for mulches which raises the questions of whether they make the soil acid. ”

“ Of fresh sawdust, even that from hard woods, he says that it can hardly be considered an economical manure; it is far inferior, for compost, to peat. But, curiously enough, the chemical evidence goes to show that it is for feeding animals rather than for feeding plants that sawdust might be put to use. Fresh sawdust, even that of pine trees, can be used with advantage as fodder in times of dearth. Twigs and leaves, as the clippings of vines and hedges, or bushes mown in pastures, are undoubtedly valuable both as manure and forage. ”

“ A plant cannot grow permanently in damp sawdust or clean sand.—Notice that the seedlings which were grown in damp sawdust presently wither and die, while those which were grown in soil flourish, and, with proper care, come to maturity. ”

“ This fungus may also grow on old sawdust heaps, a habitat which is often very worth while examining in detail by the interested amateur during wet seasons. In summer sawdust heaps dry out but after a good soaking, which, of course, can be applied artificially by frequent watering with a hose or watering-can, many interesting fungi develop. On sawdust heaps containing conifer debris a larger species with black or dark brown edge to the gills is found—P. atromarginatus Kühner. ”

“ At one time tubes of glass or fusible metal containing alkaline solutions were imbedded in the sawdust and were supposed to burst or fuse at a given temperature, but it was found that the glass accidentally broke or the fusible metal became corroded, and allowed the liquids to escape, thus damping the contents of the safe. But the mixture of alum with sawdust is open to two objections. Owing to the hygroscopic nature of sawdust the alum is liable to decomposition, thereby producing a certain moisture in the safe ”

“ The sawdust pile continued to be a place of much fun for the Curlytops. Sometimes they would start at the top and slide to the bottom of the big heap, getting their curly hair full of the dust, to the despair of their mother and Lucy. ”

“ As a last extremity sawdust can be utilized as the protein base. The possibility of turning sawdust into soap constitutes something distinctly new and novel to the industry, but the apparently impossible is readily feasible under the process described. Normally such an expedient would not find favour, inasmuch as certain difficulty is experienced in the complete subjugation, or elimination, of the fibre which is exceedingly resistant to the breaking-up action resulting from milling and the chemical reaction. ”

“ Articles showing a very complicated construction, which are however rare from the Iron Age, should be packed in perfectly dry hot pinewood sawdust, while those which are still more difficult to dry, for example, coats of chain-mail, after thorough rinsing, should be immediately put into a pan with melted lard, free from salt, and boiled until the cessation of bubbling shows that all the water has been driven off by evaporation. ”

“ If it finds the traditional food ready to its teeth, the sap-wood of the oak, with its astringent flavour, it gorges itself and proceeds to digest. If it finds nothing of the sort, it abstains from eating. This is certainly the reason why the heap of sawdust grows larger on the billet of oak but remains indefinitely stationary on the others.
What do they do in their little galleries, these grubs subjected to a strict fast in the absence of suitable victuals? In March, six months after the hatching, I look into the matter. ”

“ The process of preparing sawdust for the paper-maker is very simple and inexpensive. It may be described as an application of the system for producing mechanical pulp, because, in the main, the resultant product is very similar to the latter in its essential characteristics. The waste, being the product of the buzz-saw, is coarse in texture. ”

“ This is what the piece of elm-bough looked like. You will be able to see the little tunnels, and the stores of blue-bottles, which are black-looking, and the plugs of sawdust, in which the pupa cases of the wasp-grubs are hidden. You can see one pupa about half way up
I opened one of the long sawdust plugs and found, as I half expected to find, that at the end of it next to the blue-bottles, was a small brown papery cocoon, and that inside the cocoon was a wasp grub. ”

“ The up-river launch to the logging-camp left at seven o'clock. However, I have a job for you. We really need the Sawdust Pile for an extension of our drying-yard. Our present yard lies right under the lee of that ridge of which Tyee Head is an extension, and it's practically noon before the sun gets a fair chance at it. The Sawdust Pile gets the sun all day long, and the winds have an uninterrupted sweep across it. ”

“ Along about the middle of the afternoon, while Sandy MacPherson was still carting sawdust, and Vandine tending his circular amid the bewildering din, Stevie and some other children came down to play around the mill.
The favorite amusement with these embryo mill-hands, stream-drivers, and lumbermen, was to get on the planks as they emerged from the upper story of the mill, and go careering swiftly and smoothly down the slides, till, just before coming to the final plunge, they would jump off, and fall on the heap of sawdust. This was a game that to strangers looked perilous enough ”