Frugal Newspaper

Sticking with the log burner, frugal living topic (and this is my final post on the subject – honest) there are a couple of good and bad things about newspaper. So do you want the good news or the bad?

I’ll give you the bad news first. There are a number of gadgets on sale for about 12 Euros which claim to convert simple newspapers to logs which can be burned on the log-burner. Given that you have already paid for the newspapers they suggest that the heat they give is free.

Well, I didn’t pay 12 Euros for my gadget. I got it at a car boots sale for £2 thank goodness. I say thank goodness because, quite frankly I would have felt well ripped-off if I had paid any more. So what’s wrong with it doesn’t it work? Yes it works but the logs aren’t worth the effort. Firstly you have to tear up the paper and soak it for several days in a tub of water. Then when it has turned into a disgusting gooey mush you drag it out by the dripping handful and push it into the gadget which is a kind of mould. This compresses the paper fibres. Water and pulp leak out of every surface – and hey! You’ve got a brick.

Its no use to you however until it has dried out – and the bricks don’t dry that easily if they are stacked – so you need a pretty big under cover area to dry them and you have to turn them frequently. Once dry they can be stacked but they must be kept well away from humidity because they seem to have properties a little like salt, or blotting paper– they absorb damp and seem eager to return to their dripping state.

Now, that’s not the bad news – we haven’t got there yet. The bad news is that they stink when they burn and they give out little heat. The other problem is that being composed of softwood fibres; they probably don’t do your burner any good either.

Ok so now for the good news – well newspaper makes a fine mulch and an excellent compost so you can achieve something for nothing after-all. Better still, before you throw them on the compost use them to clean the glass on your wood-burner stove. Simply wet them, scrunch them up into balls, dip them into the cooled ash in your stove and wipe the glass with them. You’ll be amazed at how effective they are. Better in fact than bought products. Now wood-ash is what gardeners refer to as ‘potash’ – so the ash stuck on the newspaper actually improves the newspaper as a composting product. 

Now if you can find a free source of newsprint, – well it has to be a pretty good idea doesn’t it. So whereas my French neighbours paint ‘pas de pub’ (no publicity brochures please) on their letter boxes – I welcome all of it.

David

A Real Saw Horse

Having posted an article about log burning stoves, I though you might like to see this. I can’t claim to have invented it myself, I found it on a DIY website, thought it was good, built it myself and after several years of use I can confirm that it is an excellent piece of kit. Now what is it? Well it’s a sort of saw horse, a frame which holds logs while you put your chainsaw through them.

Before building this I tried all sorts of options but logs are not a standard shape or size and nothing I had held the logs secure enough for my liking. This gadget however, offers you two options. One way up it has a V shaped indentation to stop round logs rolling, turn it the other way and you have a flat surface for split timbers. You can add luggage tapes if you like to secure the log to the horse, or you can simply use your foot – suitably clad in steel toe-caped boots.

The thing took less than an hour to make because I bought the MDF cut to size from a DIY store. The whole thing is held together with long stainless steel screws and bolts which are kept in the right place by plastic water pipes. I wn’t bother giving you the detailed building directions because they are pretty obvious – but if you want to build one – here are the materials and dimensions.

To build it you’ll need:

6 pieces of ½ inch MDF each one cut into a 15inch x 12 inch rectangle

Two ½ inch stainless steel screw threads each on 24 inches long

24 stainless steel nuts

38 inches of plastic water pipe, just large enough for the screw thread to go through.

When you get home measure 2 inches into both sides of the 12 inch side of the boards and 6 inches down from the centre and cut a V shaped groove.Then drill a ½ hole in each side of  the boards 5 inches up from the bottom and 2 inches in.

Now simply put a nut on each screw thread, add a board, fix it in place with another nut and add a suitable length of water pipe to act as a spacer. Now another nut, then a board, then another nut and another water-pipe spacer. I fixed my boards at roughly 3 inch apart with a 7 inch gap between the two middle boards – and that is where the saw does its business.

Sorry to be using old imperial measurements but I find them more frugal – I mean there are less of them to the foot. Let’s face it, if I used centimetres I’d need 30 of them to make the same distance as only 12 inches.

When it comes to chainsaws I prefer electric over petrol mainly because they are lighter, less noisy, and more reliable than two-stroke engines. I have to say I am no fan of Black and Decker most of their products seem to be for light domestic use and I have burned out a considerable number of their sanders, saws and drills in recent years. These Makitas however, just run and run. I have had to replace the chain a few times but that’s all. You can get one here.

Makita UC3530A Commercial Grade 14-Inch 15 amp Electric Chain Saw with Tool-Less Blade And Chain Adjustments (USA Readers)


Makita UC3530A/2 35cm 240V Chainsaw  (UK Readers)

David