There are many instances where you might find you end up generating a lot of sawdust after a project, particularly joinery based tasks, in fact it can be surprising just how much you do produce! Instead of getting rid of the sawdust, there are plenty of things that you can do to recycle and repurpose it. There’s really no need to throw it away when there’s so much you can do with it. Before we go any further though, a word of caution, make sure that you are using real wood sawdust – the dust of composite boards such as medium density fiberboard or ‘MDF’ can be harmful if inhaled, so it’s advisable not to work with the sawdust this generates.
Here we’re going to look at a few things you can use sawdust for:
- If you’re looking to create fake snow, sawdust acts as the ideal material to create it. All you need to do is mix the sawdust with non toxic white paint, and you’re ready to go!
- After rain or snow, you can use sawdust on slippery roads so as to increase friction and traction, to help with walking and prevent slips and falls
- Sawdust can be kept so that you can use it to soak up any spills at home, or in the garage.
- If you have plants at home, sawdust can be used to feed them, but you need to make sure that you don’t use walnut sawdust to do so as this is naturally toxic to some plants
- Sawdust acts as the ideal kindling material for starting fires, which can be surprisingly difficult to get going at times
- You can use sawdust as natural filler when mixed with wood glue to fill up any holes or defects have as you work on a wood working project
- Given its toxicity, walnut sawdust can be very helpful when it comes to killing weeds in your garden or backyard.
- Sawdust is a common material when it comes to creating beddings for various small animals such as gerbils, and hamsters, but again you should be sure not to use walnut sawdust.
- Adding sawdust to your meat smoker can add to the flavour, creating delicious end results
- If you’re a lady and feeling particularly daring, you can mix sawdust with mud to give you the ideal facial to help with skin care!
- Sawdust can be used as an absorbing material for turpentine and mineral spirits.
So as you can see there’s a lot of great uses for sawdust, and these are just a few of them, if you know of any others we’d love to hear about them!
