How We Make Our Recycled Sawdust Fire Briquettes
October 2022
Imagine if you could take all the sawdust produced in a furniture and joinery workshop and turn it into something useful. That’s exactly what inspired us to create our first fire briquettes back in 2015.
What Is a Fire Briquette?
A fire briquette is a block of highly compressed sawdust, perfect for firing up your wood stove or fireplace. The saw dust is wood waste, collected by dust extraction from all the machines in our workshop and compressed using an RUF Briquetting Press from Germany. It’s one of the many ways we aim to reduce waste and our impact on the environment.
Why Are Our Fire Briquettes So Popular?
Our fire briquettes are a highly efficient, clean burning, cost efficient and environmentally friendly heat source for your wood heater. In them, there’s no glue or additives, just pure, recycled hardwood sawdust.
Their extreme density and low moisture content means you’ll get a hotter fire while burning less, and there will be less smoke.
Plus, smaller particles and lower moisture content will mean that you’ll have less ash and creosote building up in your flue. While the moisture content of commercially available firewood commonly ranges from 20 - 30%, our fire briquettes are 12% moisture content or below - meaning you’re paying for more fuel, and less water.
They’re also super convenient, delivered in Canberra on a 1 tonne or half tonne pallet into your carport or garage, ready to throw on your fire. You can also order a sample box of 12-14 briquettes, which is a great way to test them out and there is less of a waitlist on sample boxes.
Oh and our briquettes are rectangular so they are super easy to stack and won’t roll around like cylindrical firewood tends to.
What’s the Difference Between Recycled Sawdust Fire Briquettes and Other Types of Fire Briquettes?
The main difference between our briquettes and other briquettes is that ours are made from recycled hardwood timber, not new timber. So before they even become briquettes, we have recycled as much timber from a demolition site as we possibly can, and turned it in high quality furniture, or architectural products like benchtops, cladding, flooring or decking. They are also a nice rectangular shape -easy to stack and handle. Some briquettes are extruded in a cyclindrical shape and can be a pest because they roll around everywhere.
Making Our Recycled Sawdust Fire Briquettes
The Challenge - Waste
As timber recyclers, we have tons of demolition timber coming through our site every day. A large portion is either re-milled or made into furniture or other architectural products. An unavoidable byproduct of these processes is the large amounts of hardwood sawdust.
The Solution - Make Briquettes!
Thor bought a German Briquette Press and installed it in a customised shipping container. The dust extraction was re-routed to the press to collect all the sawdust from our machinery and compress it into small blocks (we call ‘em briquettes), approximately 15cm x 6cm x 9cm long. Each year the press produces around 100 tonnes of briquettes.
But how does it actually work?
By using immense hydraulic pressure (over 5000psi) the sawdust is compressed into fire briquettes and the natural lignins (plant polymers or natural glue) in the timber hold it all together. That’s it! No added glue or bonding agent, just pure Australian hardwood.
So Now You Can Hang Up Your Axe!
We’ve saved the best news for last. You’re officially off the hook this winter… no more chopping wood! We’ve done all the hard work for you.
You can get a pallet of highly efficient Fire Briquettes stacked and ready to burn (suitable for wood stoves and fireplaces) delivered to your door. They’re also available for pick-up from our workshop by the box, half pallet or pallet. Stay cosy!
Our Fire Briquettes Usually Have a Waitlist, but Psst… Here a Burning Hot Tip
While there’s often a waitlist for our fire briquettes before and during winter, our best piece of advice would be to place your order during the warmer months. This is when the waitlist is either much shorter or completely non-existent. Don’t wait until just before winter, or you’ll be sitting on that waitlist for the entire winter!