Make your own logs.
Making and burning logs made from recycled paper.
Do you want free fuel?
The average household throws out over 500kg of paper and cardboard packaging each year. Now that you have a new stove, you can use it as free fuel instead. When paper is compressed into briquettes it can efficiently burn for hours just as good as store bought briquettes or wood logs.
Making your own fuel logs is a green solution that saves money. Keep reading if you want to learn about making paper logs.
Briquette
Maker for Recycling Newspaper
available from Amazon now!
To turn old waste paper and card into 'logs' you need to do three things to it;
- wet the paper
- compress the paper into a log or brick shape
- dry your new log before trying to burn it.. voila, free fuel.
Instructions for making paper logs
Step 1 -Wetting the paper. Easy as sticking it in a sink or bucket of water for a couple of seconds.
Step
2 - Compressing your pulp into logs is best achieved with a special PAPER
LOG MAKER, There are two types.
The most popular is the briquette brick logmaker which looks like the picture opposite. The two handles compress the pulp and squeeze out water to make a briquette about the size of a standard house brick.
This tool will compress not only newspaper, but also
Junk Mail and envelopes, Catalogues and magazines,
Cereal boxes, Egg boxes and even old Tea bags to make excellent briquettes
for burning..
Another type of log maker rolls sheets of paper around a core, compressing as it rolls. The logs look great, but I found it a fiddly tool to use and once you have made a log, getting the central spar out was a bit of a pain.
Step 3 - Whichever tool you use to compress your paper logs or briquettes, you will then need to let them dry. This is not a matter of leaving them on the kitchen drainer overnight. For best results you should allow your logs to dry for at least three months before use. This is shorter than the time it takes to season freshly cut tree logs, but it does seem awfully long nonetheless.
Once your homemade wood fuel is fully dried out it can be placed in your wood burning stove or open fire and be lit to provide hours of warmth and light.
If you are going to make your own logs, think for a moment about the paper or cardboard source. If you use a glossy magazine, all that varnish, wax and ink will get burned and could produce nasty fumes and toxic smoke. I strongly suggest you stick to newsprint and plain cardboard as they will not produce much other than a nice warm fire as they burn.
In case you are wondering if it is worth the effort, a daily newspaper will burn for about an hour when turned into a log. A big sunday paper with supplements can keep the room warm all evening.
With all the sunday suppliments and junk mail we get, the briquette maker pays for itself many times over in the first year. Do you want to make your own paper logs?
Briquette
Maker for Recycling Newspaper
is available from Amazon now!
Update - April 2008: Amazon have reduced the price of the Briquette Maker for recycling newspaper by about 15% making this tool for producing free fuel an even better bargain.
They are also selling a different type of log maker that doesn't involve making the paper wet so is a lot quicker. It also produces cylindrical paper logs which look nicer.
Log
Maker - The 100% Recycled Plastic One
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