Wood shavings back to wood?

I guess it would be like turning one of those 3hr fire logs

"bob" skrev i melding news:c1s93v$k53$ snipped-for-privacy@news8.svr.pol.co.uk...

Better throwing them in a pelletsmachine and use them for heating?

Bjarte

It's been tried and not too successfully either. At least not on a small scale basis. I've tried several different times as have others I know. It just doesn't seem worth the time, effort and expense to do it right for me. I found that it's not just a simple matter of putting some shavings in a pipe (I used a 6" diameter one) with glue (I used white, yellow and some epoxies) and then compressing (I used a hydrolic piston) it together. It always came out a mess and unusable. Admittedly, I didn't experiment too much as it looked like yet another bad idea on my part.

There are some products out there that are much the same thing but with different materials such as paper, seeds, husks, mulched corn, etc. The looks that come out are quite interesting sometimes. Look at the turning catalogs under pen blanks and you'll see what I mean. The companies that make these products sell in larger stock too.

- Andrew

Most processes that do this use a heat or chemically activated adhesive under great heat and/or pressure. If this is what you want, then why not just turn particle board or parallam? Others have, and its a whole lot less expensive than make-your-own.

Some of the pen makers are using 2 part resins and trying this -- but then you are really turning the plastic, the wood is in their merely to add color or contrast. Its not too hard to do -- join penturners over in yahoo, look in the FAQ == they have a complete set on instructions on how to do it. But again, its not going to look like wood at all, but you can get some interesting effects. I have never tried making a big blank, but should be possible. greg

Sure. Particle board!

chuck the shavings on the garden - best use for them.

That's already been done Bob, just not in cylinder form yet. Its called particle board.

Barry

Bob,

You're not being stupid, although some of the answers you got are. Howard Lewin in SoCal used to do this a lot. He particularly liked to turn colored plywood, and he would then use those shavings, but sometimes natural wood as well, and mixed the shavings with urea glue and put them into a hole sawn into a block of wood and he used big clamps and a wood plug to put it under pressure. After it was dry he sawed the piece out of the block and turned it. I have done the same on a very small scale to make small button inlays, using pink ivory shavings and brass filings-it looks like exotic stone.

Give it a try.

John Jordan

Some years ago, in American Woodworker (pre-Reader's Digest takeover), there was an interesting article by a fellow that glued up blanks of dyed dowels. He used, IIRC, a resorcinol type glue, and actually had some really interesting results. As a side bit, he DID take the multi-colored shavings from the turned dowel blanks and glued THEM up into blanks. They were interesting forms...mostly dark, from the glue, but, with quite a bit of colored and white threading from the shavings of wood. If..and only if...you are producing long, thin shavings, I would think gluing them up to a blank would work well. Dust..well..as someone else pointed out...why not turn particle board? Oh yea...he glued the dowels up by building a mold with sides that slanted out slightly, soaked the dowels with glue, and, after laying them in the form, compressed them with a press to squeeze out all the extra glue he could. As others have mentioned, yellow glues are probably bad for this purpose. I suspect that if it were not for expense, CA would be great. However, a resorcinol type glue that not only sets by chemical reaction, but, is "brittle" when set, is a much better solution. Dave Mundt

CA is vulnerable to heat, as is PVA.

Urea Formaldehyde is industry's choice, probably for a reason. Tough on the tools, though.