Eagle River Review

Putting Sawdust to Practical Use.

Sawdust is one of the puzzling wastes in lumbering operations. The waste is serious, too, for the kerf—the part cut out by the saw in the mill and transformed into sawdust—always bears a rather high ratio to the boards obtained. In cutting thin stuff, one-fourth of the log, or even more, may be kerf.

Efforts to turn sawdust into pulp for the paper mill have usually been unsuccessful on account of mechanical difficulties in handling. In several European countries, however, a new way has been found of turning sawdust to account. The sawdust, chiefly pine and fir, is ground with millstones, exactly as old-time mills made cornmeal, or wheat or rye flour. Expensive machinery is not required, but it is necessary to take special precautions against fires which might start from sparks between the millstones.

The sawdust flour is sold to the dynamite factories to be mixed with nitroglycerin and forms the body or absorbent for that high explosive. It is also in demand for the manufacture of cheap blotting paper. The mills in the Harz Mountains, in Germany, an important manufacturing center, are kept busy meeting this demand.

The price of the "flour" in Germany ranges from $7.50 to $12.50 a ton. It is shipped in bags, like meal, or in bales of about 40 cubic feet, made by means of high pressure.