Other than getting splinters in my fingers, the other most common by-product of all my work in the shop is compiling a rather large collection of sawdust and planer chips that eventually piles up on the floor around my saws and other tools that I use to nibble away at wood with.
For me, this is a waste product, something to be swept up and dumped into the garbage can to be recycled or composted.
Occasionally, some of my shop waste has been used as mulch material around some of the flower beds around the house here. But for the most part, the woodchips and sawdust were mainly looked at as trash.
For the past few years, I have been volunteering with our local Scouting group. A little while ago the group did a project where they made a campfire starter out of some wood chips, candle wax and a small paper cup that you would normally use for mouthwash. I was actually pretty amazed at how simple it was to make one of those things, and was even more amazed at how well they worked in starting a campfire.
My parents primarily heat their house and as long as I can remember, they were always commenting that they sometimes had to put in a bit of effort to get the fires burning in the mornings.
Thinking back on what the Scouts did, and looking at another pile of sawdust on the shop floor, an idea struck...
