How can i make fire logs from old newspapers?
Drobble
newspapers?
I've got a heap of old papers and we are heading in to winter in Oz....I'd
like to try and make some logs if I can
Regards
Rob
Mtnguy (CO)
very question. The reply is lengthy so here is the URL ...
http://www.motherearthnews.com/askmother/felicia.shtml
Jim
"Drobble" <co...@iinet.net.au> wrote in message
news:3ac34055$0$57...@echo-01.iinet.net.au...
ing
This reminds me - back when I was growing up, my folks used
to
give the job of recycling old newspapers to me and my
brothers. They showed us how to soak old newspapers in a
galvanized tub for a
day or two, then when the paper was all mushy, we had to
take it and
form baseball sized lumps out of it -- squishing the paper
together real hard, and squeezing as much water out as we
could. We'd then
take those newspaper "balls" and lay them in the sun (we
lived on a farm with no hydro) till they were completely
dry (this took about 4 days of solid sunshine as I recall)
-- and then store them away. These rock hard balls burned
like coal in the old wood stove.
don't know if that's a help or not -- sure was a mucky job,
only a kid who was promised an icecream cone for every
twenty-five newspaper balls she formed would do it ... I
sure as heck wouldn't do it today -- too labour intensive --
plus my price has risen somewhat.
ing
Anthony Matonak
> old
> > newspapers?
"Mtnguy (CO)" wrote:
>
> It doesn't work ... here is a reply on the Mother Earth News website to your
> very question. The reply is lengthy so here is the URL ...
> http://www.motherearthnews.com/askmother/felicia.shtml
...
It's not that lengthy. The main problem with newspaper as a fuel is that
in order for print not to run it has to have a high clay content. All
paper does, except for things like maybe grocery bags or paper towels
which were never expected to have to hold ink.
This clay doesn't burn and leaves a lot of ash behind. This means you'll
have to clean out the ash from your fireplace just about every time you
burn in it rather than every now and then. According to Mother Earth
the paper logs don't burn well either. This is mostly true. You can make
it work better by soaking the paper well prior to rolling as this will
make a tighter roll. You could also use a press of some kind to squish
the rolls into even tighter 'logs'. You can add something like wax, or
nitrate fertilizer to the mix, though you might want to be careful
with what you add and how much. It may well be that a little of these
additives go a long way and too much might explode or something.
They mention that drying the logs was a problem if you use the wet paper
method. I'll agree that a typical 'wood pile' stack could take months to
dry but if you laid them out in the summer sun, on the ground (or a little
off the ground) they should be dry in just a few weeks. You could make a
solar powered dryer with sheets of plastic and drying frames and all that
but I think that's hardly required unless you also want to make dehydrated
foods as well.
More to the point, why burn newspapers when they could perhaps be better
used to add insulation to your house? Isn't cellulose insulation just
shredded newspapers? Instead of forming logs you could pulp the paper
(think large blenders, a garbage disposal setup over an outdoor bucket
with electric water pump recirculating the water, that kind of thing)
form them into bricks or blocks, dry them in the sun like adobe blocks
are. If you're afraid of them catching fire you can add borax to the mix.
Once dry you could either stack them against the walls using more pulp
as a kind of brick mortar or you could run the blocks through a couple
of wood saws to 'dimension' them and flatten out the sides and then glue
'em together with elmers or any other wood or paper glue.
This will add thickness to your walls so you'll either lose some interior
room or if you add to the outside you may need to add to the roof and
you'll need some kind of siding or the like to keep it dry.
If you add enough insulation you may not need to burn anything at all.
Well, except for those biblical periods of 40 days and nights of rain.
Anthony
quan...@webtv.net
logs. Once you get a wood fire going well, those suckers_will_burn. Not
too tight on the roll up helps too.
Q2
o^=o _ _
Tock
of papers, position 'em so they'sd be folded over just once (like a big
rectangle), moisten 'em a bit, put 'em halfway in a contraption, and turn
the hand crank. The crank would turn the paper into a log, then you'd tie
it up with wire, let it dry, and presto . . . only, those things didn't burn
very well. Don't know why, but they didn't.
--Tock
Drobble wrote in message <3ac34055$0$57...@echo-01.iinet.net.au>...
RonChoy
newspapers. A bit of string, and I got logs that burned fairly slowly. The
trick was to roll tightly. The paper burns pretty much one layer at a time.
-Ron
LARGE EYES
"Tock" <to...@ticnet.com> writes:
>We had such a device years ago in Massachusetts . . . you'd take a handfull
>of papers, position 'em so they'sd be folded over just once (like a big
>rectangle), moisten 'em a bit, put 'em halfway in a contraption, and turn
>the hand crank. The crank would turn the paper into a log, then you'd tie
>it up with wire, let it dry, and presto . . . only, those things didn't burn
>very well. Don't know why, but they didn't.
>--Tock
>
And that can't be good for the chimney....
Mtnguy (CO)
have a fire that is so hot your stove is cherry red ... ;-) Recycling
newspapers is the more frugal thing to do.
Jim
"LARGE EYES" <larg...@aol.com> wrote in message
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