(Click Read More) Here are some links that I used in my video Thank you very much for watching and God bless. ✅four Log Briquette maker amzn.to/3J1G3Gf ✅One Log Briquette maker amzn.to/3iM9lOz ✅8 ton bottle jack amzn.to/3CZKm0S ✅mixer amzn.to/3XvcYYk ✅ My T-shirts. Thank you for supporting my channel✅ diy-jim.creator-spring.com 5% off shirts use DIYJim2021 when checking out ✅Send me a thank you ✅ DIY Jim PO Box #105 Hughesville Pa, 17737 ✝Bible ESV easy to read amzn.to/3qshNQP ✝Bible NKJV amzn.to/30ns322 ✅Titan Solar Generator (large generator) poweredportablesolar.com/ref/48/ ✅Copyright free music and sounds artlist.io/James-3934489 ✅Sony ZV-1 (camera I use) amzn.to/3MxVeG2 ✅sony wireless UWP-D (mic I use). amzn.to/3LEPV6m ✅Go Pro that I use amzn.to/2WC6WXH ✅Wireless mic used: Rode Wireless Go amzn.to/2WxQt7c *Full transparency. I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. *Disclaimer - Thank you for visiting my UA-cam channel. Please understand that the content on the DIY jim UA-cam channel is intended for informational purposes only. I make no warranties about the completeness, reliability and accuracy of this information. Any action you take upon the information posted on my UA-cam channel is strictly at your own risk, and I will not be liable for any losses and damages in connection with the use of my UA-cam channel. #freeheat. #Briquettemaket. #paperlogheat. #junkmailheat
Add some ammonium nitrate, about 3 tablespoons for a whole bucket, and let it soak for a whole night, then just grind all the paper. It will let it burn a little bit more potent.
@@despectablebosshandlemantle you try it first and make a video. 20 years in the military retired E7 couple deployments. Sounds like a bad idea. Thanks for watching
Im no briquettes engineer but with this economy in the last 3 years i would check for good shredders from office closure sales. Consistency is easier to mix and mold.
I made about 50 of these bricks and dried them out fully over the summer, I burnt them recently but I was pretty underwhelmed with the results, not much heat given off and they seem to just smoulder rather than burn effectively, not sure theyre worth the effort! I know they're free but they are quite time consuming. Just my opinion though!
My family has wanted to use a device like this for a while since we get a lot of scrap paper/cardboard and have a wood heater. I am glad to know this actually exists and is pretty easy to use. Thanks for showing this off!
I bought a cheap Amazon Basics paper shredder and modified the intake to be larger with a dremel to shred the boxes up. It makes it way more consistent and way easier to blend up.
As others have suggested, a paper shredder would be a great help here. We don't have garbage pickup because it is very expensive, so we divert as much of our waste stream as possible into recycling and composting. This makes it possible for us to go to the local dump only about 6 times a year, which is much cheaper than weekly service or renting a dumpster. It's astonishing how much paper waste we have to deal with. Our shredder makes this possible. All paper food packaging gets shredded, junk mail, cardboard boxes (our shredder will accept them but you have to tear them into pieces) toilet paper and paper towel rolls, etc., get shredded and composted. If we lived in a cold climate and/or heated with a wood stove, we would consider using some of this waste stream to make burnable bricks. There are some things I won't put into the compost bin that I would add to burnable bricks, so the bricks might be a good alternative path for some of that stuff. You can also add stale or unwanted dry goods to your bricks, like flour, baking mixes, cereals, pasta, etc. I'm talking about spoiled stuff that would get thrown out (or composted) anyway. Even the best-intentioned person will occasionally have dry goods that get forgotten in the back of the cupboard until they are oxidized and not fit for consumption. This material still has calories which could be extracted as heat in a burn, and would incorporate well into the wet slurry before pressing into bricks. Along those lines, an experiment I'd love to see would be to grind or shred kitchen compost material and add that to your bricks as well. While letting such material break down to enrich the soil may be a healthier way to deal with it from an eco perspective, if you are spending a considerable amount of money and burnable resources to heat your home, it might be at least marginally worthwhile to extract the value of other organic waste as heat if it also saved you money/hassles on waste disposal. The challenge would be finding an efficient way to shred it and you'd also have to form it up and let it dry fast in hot sun to avoid a smelly, rotting mess. But it might be fun to try!
When it comes to the press I personally don't believe in over engineering. I think it's a great design. Bravo my good sir. Using the bottle jack great 💡 idea. This would help any DYI'er getter done right. This video is A+and two thumbs 👍👍 wwaaayyy uupp.
I like your brickmaker. That’s pretty cool by the way your combination of stuff really works pretty good there. Just thought I would throw in a little something that if you go by Starbucks or any of your social coffee shops, some of them empty, their coffee grounds, and the paper coffee strainers as other stuff like that into a separate can that they’ll give it to you. Coffee grounds work great for making bricks For burning. Also, we found that in the holes in the center that if you heat up some wax and just pour a little wax into the holes, not a lot it doesn’t take a lot. It helps the log/brick to burn. Sometimes they’re hard to get started and this will help that get going. Just thought you’d like to know.
I think your mold mount is perfect. I have been saving lots of papers, egg trays, & junk mails that I have been shredding; I will follow your model & build one myself. Again, the 4-brick mold is perfect size and make things a bit faster. Thank you for the awesome vids.
11:10 this is most likely a wax coating, a few years ago when i worked retail we had to seperate the cardboard with that coating from the normal stuff we'd put the big compactor. it was usually only on the boxes from the meat department or produce, basically anything that might drip. as you guessed it's to slightly waterproof the cardboard so a tiny bit of moisture doesn't make the box soggy.
Jim definitely invest in a good paper shredder makes life so much easier, I shred most cardboard IE Amazon packaging etc, I also used to use the same mixing paddle as you until I made one from a length of 10mm stud and an old dealt circular blade just cut slices into it and twist them it mixes so much better 😊😊😊
I know this is an old video; however, it just showed up in my feed. So glad it did! Ive always found this interesting. Thanks for a great presentation. Respect.
Maybe you should press them and if you're still getting water reset your jacket with a spacer and press them again. I worked at a place that made apple cider and juice and when it pressed it so far we would let it down and put blocks of wood and repress it. 👍😁
Ive done this before and a paper shredder works excellent, also you are supposed to let the "mix" set in water for 1 week to let the paper start to break down and pull ink out of the paper. Don't make them too thick because it takes forever to dry if you dont have a brick maker, i used a bucket and made an 8 inch thick puck, oven dried for hours and the center was still wet. Took almost a month to fully dry.
I got a yard vac/wood chipper id use to shred it. Roll it into tubes, push it in 10:18 Ice Fishing auger would be best. They make small ones for drills. Id have to make my own brick press. The PVC tubes should be steel VERTICAL tubes the brick lift/press plate should have a hole for them to press/lift around them. I'll use my 20T press. You can fix yours. Subscribed from Detroit.
If you want to use your chimney as a relatively powerful light torch, sure. I still remember that pure white 15 ft tall flame almost next door to my grandparents home. It lit the closet half a click to all directions. The fire brigade was called, but it deemed the flame untameable. The owner of the house was lucky that there were no tile seams leaking, but the chimney was banned to use before rebuilding it. They had used only newspapers for heating for 5 years or so.
@@danburch9989 If I recall correctly, this was called as an ash fire. As newspapers do not have creosote, that is most likely not reason. Also the annual chimney inspection had been skipped.
I was showing my wife this video and when you said "don't drink too much. You might get a paper cut or something" she was taking notes, when I laughed she looked at me like I was crazy😆😂😂
So from my experience, cardboard needs to be soaked for *weeks* if you don't pre-process it. Yes, remove tape, yes dont use slick paper. Reciept paper is good. A decent shredder is VERY helpful. Make sure if you run cardboard through it to cut it into strips no wider than 3 inches to prevent jams. If you mix in sawdust, make SURE its just a small amount because it will prevent the paper from fusing if you have too much sawdust.
I'm going to echo what a lot of people mentioned already and say just get a good paper shredder and be done with it. Heck of a lot more fun than tearing the stuff up by hand. Save the drinking for after. I think the mold problem you lad in a later video could be solved by a better press to remove as much moisture as possible and to run a fan on it with a dehumidifier in the summer or a little heat in the winter. To be honest, I think the bricks would burn just fine without the holes from the tubes so you could eliminate that step to save some time too.
This would be an awesome idea for those companies that shred documents and papers. All that material they produce could be turned into bricks or pellets for heating.
if you use a paper shredder to tear up the paper and carboard it saves a lot of time with the mixing aspect. I never thought of sharpening the mixer like you did its something I'm going to have to try with the next batch i make
I use a large paper shredder for my paper and cardboard trash. Soak it in 5 gallon buckets and bacon grease / used oil whenever the opportunity arises. Press, dry, and burn
I wonder if mixing in some crushed up charcoal would help it burn better. Wax would make them waterproof (just like the wax impregnated cotton firestarters) Also, add some magnesium shavings to a part of a brick to get it to ignite faster. Oooh, and some salts for color effects 8)
I remember doing this as a kid. We had a hot water service that required a lot of wood to run. I used to nail the newspaper to a wooden block and used a knife to shred it. Then tear off the leftover paper from the nail. Remove and repeat. The news papers were a lot thicker back then though. We also used to collect old phone books, coloured paper and glossy junkmail wasnt any good. The thinner the paper the better. Thanks for the blast from the past mate 😂
I'm guessing using a shredder beforehand to get smaller pieces would probably be better but I'm also wondering if heating the mixture while blending it and letting some of the water evaporate off before putting it in the press would help with consistency at all
Been giving this some thought for a while...instead of water have you thought about using an ethenol? It would dry much faster and the solvent action of the alcohol would help strip the paper faster, plus if there is any residue after dehydration it wouldn't keep it from being lit. Faster evaporation as well.
Love the idea of using the press and the fairly simple structure. From a structural perspective, screwing into the end grain is definitely the weakest connection, and might even weaken the wood for your other connections. Through bolts the strongest. Definitely stick with the regular black and white paper and plain brown cardboard. Don’t want to put all the nasties into the air for you or your neighbors to breathe into yourself. Additionally, paper will turn to pulp if you leave it in water. The length of time to complete the process is shortened by the energy you put into it, whether your own energy or some electricity generated from other fuel sources. I made one shredder by attaching an old saw blade to a metal rod, thought you gotta keep it away from the sides. I use a steel 55 gallon drum.
Tip. When shredding newspaper. Ripping it from the crease to the edge will give you longer strip's of paper instead of small random pieces. But in this application, the longer strip's might get tangled up when mixing.
You can make a very simple one with 2 coffee cans, one with holes, a blender you dont want, water and a strainer. This is better for mass production though. You can also use grass clippings ect. Also more dog videos.
paper shreder, all thread with saw blades for the drill, a 5gl bucket with holes to drain the water, even using pvc with holes as a mold to make round briquettes
I'd try and drill a hole in the center of a lid from a pail big enough to run the drill end of the mixer through. Then stuff the mixer through the hole and attach it to the drill. You can then place the lid on the pail and mix full speed and not worry about making a mess. It may allow you to mix a bit better and shred cardboard. Not sure if that'd be worth the effort but may help No matter what I loved the video.❤. Awesome idea.
After a couple more of those undisclosed beverages, I'd be surprised if shredding the carboard with your lawn mower didn't start to sound like a good idea. Nothing says cold beer time quite like the lawn mower.
Oh yes I’m 66 years old by the way when I was a young boy, there was a man who had a small boat motor sitting inside of a 55 gallon drum and it wasn’t a big one that sucked the water up. It was just a prop down in there, and he would fire that thing up once a week kept water in it, and he threw his newspapers in their magazines in white, not some sawdust and coffee grounds and straw and feathers from the chickens and the turkeys and anything else around this property that was burned that we mix up in there. He would gather tubes that come inside of carpet. This is where the story comes together I grew up in flooring and he would come and get these tubes from my father, he had a 1 inch galvanized pipe that he would put in the center and he would fill these tubes up with the slurry of paper and leave it out in the sun to let it dry. At 105 to 110° they were dry before winter came. He had the tubes cut in about 18 inch links and that’s what he burned for his heat in his house. It was pretty cool. God bless.
I'll say this, untreated carboard is far more available. Ask any hotel, business, or otherwise for their shipping boxes. I've found that non gloss paints that aren't some thing that's surface level on the boxes are fine to use. They tend to be water based colors to soak into the cardboard. Cheap, easy, and usually not an issue.
for the paper.. use a used 50$ office paper shredder that has either micro-cut or cross cut patterns so you can use more paper for less space.. it will compact more.
Since I do a lot of wood turning I have more wood chips than I know what to do with and i have a lot of boxes from Amazon. This would be a great idea except I've also got more dead trees than I could ever burn so... But I still might try it. I've got two wood stoves in the shop and one in the house.
I wonder if instead of room temperature water, would hot/boiling water help soften the cardboard and paper break down quicker and easier? Then once its sat overnight it'll be cold and mushy and ready to blend
A good sauce for wood as a fire starter are wooden ice pop sticks. Get some to tolerate the hot summer period for yourself or the kids and collect the sticks and the box they come in.
Man a harbor freight barring press with air jack and heavy springs would make that so much faster turned one into a log splitter once 20ton air jack is a beast
Actually, cold temperatures will evaporate moisture faster than heat will. If you decide to try this again you could probably leave the blocks in your unheated garage with maybe a box fan on them and they should dry as fast or faster than during the summer weather. Maybe that could be another video.
How does that work, then? I thought the rate of evaporation _increased_ with higher temperatures - simply because at higher temperatures more molecules are moving faster - creating enough energy to break away from the liquid to become a gas. I know as the temperature decreases, the rate of *_condensation_* increases, but that's different of course...
@@221b-Maker-Street - I am not sure the science behind it just that when i make beef jerky during the winter i put the beef between cheese cloth and strap it to the box fan in the garage and it takes about 60 to 70% of the time it takes with the same setup during the summer months. I am guessing it's due to the humidity or lack thereof. Someone tried to explain it to me one day that it's similar to freeze drying but I don't really understand how that happens either.
@@jlathem56 thats because in winter the air is often much dryer than in summer, altough warm air can carry more moisture than cold air if its at the same hummidity level
@@221b-Maker-Street I grew up in the midwest, and some specific conditions have to happen. When the temperature drops below freezing, the humidity drops to zero after a few days (which can be miserable; nosebleeds, itchy eyes, etc). If you can keep an area like a garage relatively warm or at least above freezing when low temperatures (close to or below freezing) dropped the ambient humidity, the conditions for evaporation are ideal. That's basically how freeze drying works, iirc. A murderously hot summer in Texas or Arizona works, too. Note that in a town like Houston, TX it can be obscenely hot, but way too humid for evaporation to work. Edit: I made some edits. Sorry if this is messing up your inbox, Maker-Street.
Save yourself some energy by purchasing a cheap office shreader and attatch to a wall high enough to have paper drop into a big bucket keep the long plastic bucket conneted to shreader as that protects fingers when shreading. A weakness thoughas when that fill the p a per tends to back up in shredder and jam. By cuttingthe bottom out it lets paper t hrough into your bigger bucket. With careful measuring you can plce ev e rytjing in such a way that there is no temptation to put fingers in from bottom to clear paper b jams from bottom while machine plugged in. Running the shredder in reverse also helps
Hi, great videos and something I’ve wanted to do for years now. You saved me years of suffering and experimenting thanks for sharing your experience. P.S if you have a link for them black leather fire gloves you have that would be great. Cheers 🍻
Another way to use the mixer that you use in this video would be to put it inside a piece of p. V. C with a clean out wye at the top. So that way it pulls the material from the bottom up the pipe and dumping it on the top pushing the unchopped material to the bottom.
Great video - thanks ! Just one question - I checked all my firewood and none of the wood logs have holes in them so why do we need a hole in the middle of the briquettes? 🙂
How much easier way would it be to take your mixer and use an angle grinder to put some shredded edges on it Century going to get it wet ill shred that up if it gets soaked or better yet for like 60 to 100 bucks you can buy a shredder that can handle like half inch twigs and I will shred anything you'll need for this and it's so much faster
Is it possible to salvage all that water or use watter that comes out of the washer mashine? I live in a place where water is not that abundant so I try to be as less wasteful as possible.
I get that its free but it also looks like alot of work. I wonder if you can just shred the paper through like a harbor freight wood chipper that way you don't sit there ripping it up.
What would happen is you soaked the paper in vegetable oil instead of water, them tried to compress it into a log/brick? I watched a youtuber mix oil and sawdust and it burned well, but he did not press the mixture into a brick. I've enjoyed your videos. Thanks for making them.
Instead of using plastic pipe try using Bamboo cane It can even be the old stuff that is no use in the garden. Also paper from your shedder is a good source. Contact a local office and they will probably be glad to give you it. Visit a local joinery/carpentry company for your sawdust ,They usually have to pay to have it taken away
I did this a decade or more ago. I used one of those '1 brick' models, though, and unless the quality is much better now, it's completely crap. I ended up using C-clamps on it to keep it from just 'spreading out'. The instructions I had was to use newspapers, soaked and compressed without tearing up or even crumpling the paper. That did NOT work... The second attempt was using a paper shredder. That works fine. The briquettes takes weeks or months to fully dry. And the briquettes burned up fast. 15minutes was the longest any of them lasted. And they burn badly. Newsprint is horribly bad quality. It leaves a lot of tarry residue in the chimney, so you will need to sweep it much more often or risk a chimney fire. Frankly, I didn't find the result worth the effort. Glossy paper or brown cardboard is probably worse.
@10:56 i would definitely make a use of the bench drilling machine and adapt tge mixing tool to it, it's definitely a game changer, i could even custom make a chopping tool for it and use it!
@@DIYJIM Definitely, we would have cracked a few of those beers for sure! If you use the drilling bench press... Use a vice or something to secure the bucket, like any improvisation be very cautious, I would not hold the bucket with all inside and run the mixing tool with it, could be dangerous. Greetings from Vancouver Canada!
Would running the papers through a shredder help? Ok, so you answered that question. I'm hearing some sort of music around the 13:45 mark. Kinda backgroundish. Also, at 15:00.
No problem Jim, thanks for your reply. I'm wondering if a dry, tight roll of corrugated cardboard, which is quicker, would be as good. Thanks for your work.
I am suprised you added it all together in each bucket then tried to shred and mix it all. I'm thinking thats a little Backwards Sir (I could be wrong). Wouldn't adding Water to ALREADY FINELY SHREDDED PAPER work better? Infact using a Kitchen Blender would have been MUCH FASTER AND EASIER I think (could be wrong but my old 🥷 Ninja Blender could handle it I think). After the pulp is made (water + Paper, Water + Cardboard) THEN add your Sawdust/woodchips in a bucket like the midway point of the video. Always get your paper/cardboard to the finest/smallest parts tou can before mixing. Also simmering it on low heat in a big pot helps break down the fibre strength. I believe it would make the mixing/shredding you were doing in the buckets easier. Although I still think a blender would be best. This will make it similar to wood pellets for being fine particles. Of course if you want yer bricks to have larger chunks the way you did it works fine. Done my Arm Chair Coaching Now LoL. Thanks for sharing the video Sir!
Hobbies don't always make perfect sense. If you are buying wood, this would save you a little money. Maybe you could justify it that way. It would be good for people in the desert with not many trees
Nice idea. BUT - to be efficient you must have a good source of wasted paper. And when you calculate time and effort to make so many bricks that it will cut your heating costs significantly I doubt that it is effective. Better find an inexpensive source of firewood.
I make Coffee Bricks for my wood stoves. it's a mix of saw dust and used coffee grounds. They burn 20-25% hotter and 20-25% long than firewood and they produce less smoke. They also cost me nothing to make, My brother works for a furniture builder and my local coffee shop saves their used coffee grounds for me, they also leave the coffee filters in it which I dry out and make wick starters out of. This will be my 3rd winter making them and even when it got -40 in January of 2023 we stayed nice and toasty in our house.
I have made a crap load of these... Key thing is to run all the cardboard and paper throw a paper shredder 1st than soak them. trust me its way faster!!!!
Thank you for your response. I used to go to the post office every night and take all the magazines to read. I have a very large commercial paper shredder now and I think I am going to build a press and make bricks for hard time survival. I think taking all the mail trash and shredding it would be valuable. I will leave the post office with an empty bag and I will have emergency heat and not have to cut wood. Where can I buy a brick mold? I will recover the water and use washing machine water to preserve my resources. I truly appreciate you. God bless you.
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*Disclaimer - Thank you for visiting my UA-cam channel. Please understand that the content on the DIY jim UA-cam channel is intended for informational purposes only. I make no warranties about the completeness, reliability and accuracy of this information. Any action you take upon the information posted on my UA-cam channel is strictly at your own risk, and I will not be liable for any losses and damages in connection with the use of my UA-cam channel.
#freeheat. #Briquettemaket. #paperlogheat. #junkmailheat
Add some ammonium nitrate, about 3 tablespoons for a whole bucket, and let it soak for a whole night, then just grind all the paper. It will let it burn a little bit more potent.
@@despectablebosshandlemantle you try it first and make a video. 20 years in the military retired E7 couple deployments. Sounds like a bad idea. Thanks for watching
Im no briquettes engineer but with this economy in the last 3 years i would check for good shredders from office closure sales. Consistency is easier to mix and mold.
Agree I have been doing that.
I immediately thought that. A cheap shredder would make this an easier and more efficient process.
Be sure it is a cross cut paper shredder.
I came here to suggest this as well because I used a paper shredder from a yard sale I purchased for $5 and it worked perfectly!
I made about 50 of these bricks and dried them out fully over the summer, I burnt them recently but I was pretty underwhelmed with the results, not much heat given off and they seem to just smoulder rather than burn effectively, not sure theyre worth the effort! I know they're free but they are quite time consuming. Just my opinion though!
My family has wanted to use a device like this for a while since we get a lot of scrap paper/cardboard and have a wood heater. I am glad to know this actually exists and is pretty easy to use. Thanks for showing this off!
Thanks for watching
I bought a cheap Amazon Basics paper shredder and modified the intake to be larger with a dremel to shred the boxes up. It makes it way more consistent and way easier to blend up.
I just bought a shredder much easier
As others have suggested, a paper shredder would be a great help here. We don't have garbage pickup because it is very expensive, so we divert as much of our waste stream as possible into recycling and composting. This makes it possible for us to go to the local dump only about 6 times a year, which is much cheaper than weekly service or renting a dumpster. It's astonishing how much paper waste we have to deal with. Our shredder makes this possible. All paper food packaging gets shredded, junk mail, cardboard boxes (our shredder will accept them but you have to tear them into pieces) toilet paper and paper towel rolls, etc., get shredded and composted. If we lived in a cold climate and/or heated with a wood stove, we would consider using some of this waste stream to make burnable bricks. There are some things I won't put into the compost bin that I would add to burnable bricks, so the bricks might be a good alternative path for some of that stuff.
You can also add stale or unwanted dry goods to your bricks, like flour, baking mixes, cereals, pasta, etc. I'm talking about spoiled stuff that would get thrown out (or composted) anyway. Even the best-intentioned person will occasionally have dry goods that get forgotten in the back of the cupboard until they are oxidized and not fit for consumption. This material still has calories which could be extracted as heat in a burn, and would incorporate well into the wet slurry before pressing into bricks.
Along those lines, an experiment I'd love to see would be to grind or shred kitchen compost material and add that to your bricks as well. While letting such material break down to enrich the soil may be a healthier way to deal with it from an eco perspective, if you are spending a considerable amount of money and burnable resources to heat your home, it might be at least marginally worthwhile to extract the value of other organic waste as heat if it also saved you money/hassles on waste disposal. The challenge would be finding an efficient way to shred it and you'd also have to form it up and let it dry fast in hot sun to avoid a smelly, rotting mess. But it might be fun to try!
Not sure if I will try this but I also would like to see this. Thanks for watching
When it comes to the press I personally don't believe in over engineering. I think it's a great design. Bravo my good sir. Using the bottle jack great 💡 idea. This would help any DYI'er getter done right.
This video is A+and two thumbs 👍👍 wwaaayyy uupp.
Thank you very much and thanks for watching
I like your brickmaker. That’s pretty cool by the way your combination of stuff really works pretty good there. Just thought I would throw in a little something that if you go by Starbucks or any of your social coffee shops, some of them empty, their coffee grounds, and the paper coffee strainers as other stuff like that into a separate can that they’ll give it to you. Coffee grounds work great for making bricks For burning. Also, we found that in the holes in the center that if you heat up some wax and just pour a little wax into the holes, not a lot it doesn’t take a lot. It helps the log/brick to burn. Sometimes they’re hard to get started and this will help that get going. Just thought you’d like to know.
Good info thanks for watching
I think your mold mount is perfect. I have been saving lots of papers, egg trays, & junk mails that I have been shredding; I will follow your model & build one myself. Again, the 4-brick mold is perfect size and make things a bit faster. Thank you for the awesome vids.
Thanks and thanks for watching
I used to use a garbage disposal that was modified to make instant paper pulp for paper making
Awesome idea, thanks for watching
11:10 this is most likely a wax coating, a few years ago when i worked retail we had to seperate the cardboard with that coating from the normal stuff we'd put the big compactor. it was usually only on the boxes from the meat department or produce, basically anything that might drip.
as you guessed it's to slightly waterproof the cardboard so a tiny bit of moisture doesn't make the box soggy.
Jim definitely invest in a good paper shredder makes life so much easier, I shred most cardboard IE Amazon packaging etc, I also used to use the same mixing paddle as you until I made one from a length of 10mm stud and an old dealt circular blade just cut slices into it and twist them it mixes so much better 😊😊😊
Now that’s an idea, I might have to try that
just left a comment saying the same thing!!!+
I was going to suggest that, but decided to browse the comments to see if someone else beat me to it.
I know this is an old video; however, it just showed up in my feed. So glad it did! Ive always found this interesting. Thanks for a great presentation. Respect.
Welcome! Thanks for watching
Maybe you should press them and if you're still getting water reset your jacket with a spacer and press them again. I worked at a place that made apple cider and juice and when it pressed it so far we would let it down and put blocks of wood and repress it. 👍😁
Thanks for the tip
Ive done this before and a paper shredder works excellent, also you are supposed to let the "mix" set in water for 1 week to let the paper start to break down and pull ink out of the paper. Don't make them too thick because it takes forever to dry if you dont have a brick maker, i used a bucket and made an 8 inch thick puck, oven dried for hours and the center was still wet. Took almost a month to fully dry.
Thanks for the tips and thanks for watching
I got a yard vac/wood chipper id use to shred it. Roll it into tubes, push it in 10:18 Ice Fishing auger would be best. They make small ones for drills. Id have to make my own brick press. The PVC tubes should be steel VERTICAL tubes the brick lift/press plate should have a hole for them to press/lift around them. I'll use my 20T press. You can fix yours. Subscribed from Detroit.
Thanks for subscribing. The ice fishing Auger sounds like a good idea.
If you want to use your chimney as a relatively powerful light torch, sure. I still remember that pure white 15 ft tall flame almost next door to my grandparents home. It lit the closet half a click to all directions. The fire brigade was called, but it deemed the flame untameable. The owner of the house was lucky that there were no tile seams leaking, but the chimney was banned to use before rebuilding it. They had used only newspapers for heating for 5 years or so.
That sounds like a creosote fire from burning soft woods without annual chimney maintenance.
@@danburch9989 If I recall correctly, this was called as an ash fire. As newspapers do not have creosote, that is most likely not reason. Also the annual chimney inspection had been skipped.
@@mikapeltokorpi7671 I was thinking the creosote was built up before the newspaper was started to be used as fuel.
agree sounds like creosote
I was showing my wife this video and when you said "don't drink too much. You might get a paper cut or something" she was taking notes, when I laughed she looked at me like I was crazy😆😂😂
Glad you like my video. Thanks again
So from my experience, cardboard needs to be soaked for *weeks* if you don't pre-process it. Yes, remove tape, yes dont use slick paper. Reciept paper is good. A decent shredder is VERY helpful. Make sure if you run cardboard through it to cut it into strips no wider than 3 inches to prevent jams.
If you mix in sawdust, make SURE its just a small amount because it will prevent the paper from fusing if you have too much sawdust.
Thanks for all the tips. Thanks for watching.
Doesn't receipt paper often have BPA?
I'm going to echo what a lot of people mentioned already and say just get a good paper shredder and be done with it. Heck of a lot more fun than tearing the stuff up by hand. Save the drinking for after. I think the mold problem you lad in a later video could be solved by a better press to remove as much moisture as possible and to run a fan on it with a dehumidifier in the summer or a little heat in the winter. To be honest, I think the bricks would burn just fine without the holes from the tubes so you could eliminate that step to save some time too.
I have bought a paper shredder definitely easier. Thanks for watching
This would be an awesome idea for those companies that shred documents and papers. All that material they produce could be turned into bricks or pellets for heating.
Agree thanks for watching
actually it would be a big waste of resources, paper can be recycled many times until its of such poor quality that it can only be burned
@@certhassthat was a good point also. Recycle paper in to other products > recycle to be burned > throw away in trash
You know you’re doing it right because you got the dogs’ seal of approval.
Thanks for watching
if you use a paper shredder to tear up the paper and carboard it saves a lot of time with the mixing aspect. I never thought of sharpening the mixer like you did its something I'm going to have to try with the next batch i make
I just bought a shredder it is way better
I'm thinking you could run the paper stuff through a leaf shredder and it would work like a charm.
I thought the same thing I never found a leaf shredder that was a good enough price for me to try that.
I think buying a used electric leaf mulcher would maybe chop things up better and then after you soak them run your mixer will work better
thanks for watching
I use a large paper shredder for my paper and cardboard trash. Soak it in 5 gallon buckets and bacon grease / used oil whenever the opportunity arises. Press, dry, and burn
Awesome thanks for watching
I grew up in Tampa. I've been to Anna Marie Island many, many times. Beautiful beaches.
Agree we would like to go back again.
I wonder if mixing in some crushed up charcoal would help it burn better.
Wax would make them waterproof (just like the wax impregnated cotton firestarters)
Also, add some magnesium shavings to a part of a brick to get it to ignite faster.
Oooh, and some salts for color effects 8)
Makes me think maybe someday I’ll try, thanks for watching
I remember doing this as a kid. We had a hot water service that required a lot of wood to run. I used to nail the newspaper to a wooden block and used a knife to shred it. Then tear off the leftover paper from the nail. Remove and repeat. The news papers were a lot thicker back then though. We also used to collect old phone books, coloured paper and glossy junkmail wasnt any good. The thinner the paper the better. Thanks for the blast from the past mate 😂
Welcome thanks for watching
I'm guessing using a shredder beforehand to get smaller pieces would probably be better but I'm also wondering if heating the mixture while blending it and letting some of the water evaporate off before putting it in the press would help with consistency at all
I did buy a shredder definitely helps. Thanks for watching
Been giving this some thought for a while...instead of water have you thought about using an ethenol? It would dry much faster and the solvent action of the alcohol would help strip the paper faster, plus if there is any residue after dehydration it wouldn't keep it from being lit. Faster evaporation as well.
You try it make a video, thanks for watching
Love the idea of using the press and the fairly simple structure. From a structural perspective, screwing into the end grain is definitely the weakest connection, and might even weaken the wood for your other connections. Through bolts the strongest.
Definitely stick with the regular black and white paper and plain brown cardboard. Don’t want to put all the nasties into the air for you or your neighbors to breathe into yourself.
Additionally, paper will turn to pulp if you leave it in water. The length of time to complete the process is shortened by the energy you put into it, whether your own energy or some electricity generated from other fuel sources. I made one shredder by attaching an old saw blade to a metal rod, thought you gotta keep it away from the sides. I use a steel 55 gallon drum.
Thanks for watching
Tip. When shredding newspaper. Ripping it from the crease to the edge will give you longer strip's of paper instead of small random pieces. But in this application, the longer strip's might get tangled up when mixing.
Thanks for watching
You can make a very simple one with 2 coffee cans, one with holes, a blender you dont want, water and a strainer. This is better for mass production though. You can also use grass clippings ect.
Also more dog videos.
thanks for watching
@@DIYJIM of course its good stuff
paper shreder, all thread with saw blades for the drill, a 5gl bucket with holes to drain the water, even using pvc with holes as a mold to make round briquettes
Definitely some good ideas thanks
An extra thoght is to direct a fan onto the bricks to help speed up the drying process.
Thanks for watching
I'd try and drill a hole in the center of a lid from a pail big enough to run the drill end of the mixer through. Then stuff the mixer through the hole and attach it to the drill. You can then place the lid on the pail and mix full speed and not worry about making a mess. It may allow you to mix a bit better and shred cardboard.
Not sure if that'd be worth the effort but may help
No matter what I loved the video.❤. Awesome idea.
Thanks for the idea
After a couple more of those undisclosed beverages, I'd be surprised if shredding the carboard with your lawn mower didn't start to sound like a good idea. Nothing says cold beer time quite like the lawn mower.
@@hexamyte That might be a good idea I think I might try it. Stay tuned
Oh yes I’m 66 years old by the way when I was a young boy, there was a man who had a small boat motor sitting inside of a 55 gallon drum and it wasn’t a big one that sucked the water up. It was just a prop down in there, and he would fire that thing up once a week kept water in it, and he threw his newspapers in their magazines in white, not some sawdust and coffee grounds and straw and feathers from the chickens and the turkeys and anything else around this property that was burned that we mix up in there. He would gather tubes that come inside of carpet. This is where the story comes together I grew up in flooring and he would come and get these tubes from my father, he had a 1 inch galvanized pipe that he would put in the center and he would fill these tubes up with the slurry of paper and leave it out in the sun to let it dry. At 105 to 110° they were dry before winter came. He had the tubes cut in about 18 inch links and that’s what he burned for his heat in his house. It was pretty cool. God bless.
Awesome thanks for watching
Love your vibe while being a educator Thanks
Welcome thanks for watching
Don’t shave, looks awesome! Video is great and comical. Great job big guy.
Thanks CUZ hope your doing good
Maybe a Cement Mixer would be good if you are doing a lot of these.
Maybe thanks for watching
I'll say this, untreated carboard is far more available. Ask any hotel, business, or otherwise for their shipping boxes. I've found that non gloss paints that aren't some thing that's surface level on the boxes are fine to use. They tend to be water based colors to soak into the cardboard. Cheap, easy, and usually not an issue.
Thanks for watching
My aunt has a place on Perico island right to the east. Beautiful place. Stay well Jim!
Awesome thanks for watching
for the paper.. use a used 50$ office paper shredder that has either micro-cut or cross cut patterns so you can use more paper for less space.. it will compact more.
Thanks for tip I just bought one
Since I do a lot of wood turning I have more wood chips than I know what to do with and i have a lot of boxes from Amazon. This would be a great idea except I've also got more dead trees than I could ever burn so... But I still might try it. I've got two wood stoves in the shop and one in the house.
Looks like you have a lot of free fuel. Just a little work to get it. Thanks for watching.
I wonder if instead of room temperature water, would hot/boiling water help soften the cardboard and paper break down quicker and easier? Then once its sat overnight it'll be cold and mushy and ready to blend
Good question not sure But I bet it would help
A good sauce for wood as a fire starter are wooden ice pop sticks.
Get some to tolerate the hot summer period for yourself or the kids and collect the sticks and the box they come in.
Thanks for the tip and thanks for watching
I think the dogs wants to help you rip up the box and papers :)
I agree this would have been one time they could have helped lol
Definitely will be trying this soon!
Thanks for watching
Man a harbor freight barring press with air jack and heavy springs would make that so much faster turned one into a log splitter once 20ton air jack is a beast
Maybe I will look into it. Thanks for watching
Actually, cold temperatures will evaporate moisture faster than heat will. If you decide to try this again you could probably leave the blocks in your unheated garage with maybe a box fan on them and they should dry as fast or faster than during the summer weather. Maybe that could be another video.
Never new that might have to try
How does that work, then? I thought the rate of evaporation _increased_ with higher temperatures - simply because at higher temperatures more molecules are moving faster - creating enough energy to break away from the liquid to become a gas.
I know as the temperature decreases, the rate of *_condensation_* increases, but that's different of course...
@@221b-Maker-Street - I am not sure the science behind it just that when i make beef jerky during the winter i put the beef between cheese cloth and strap it to the box fan in the garage and it takes about 60 to 70% of the time it takes with the same setup during the summer months. I am guessing it's due to the humidity or lack thereof.
Someone tried to explain it to me one day that it's similar to freeze drying but I don't really understand how that happens either.
@@jlathem56 thats because in winter the air is often much dryer than in summer, altough warm air can carry more moisture than cold air if its at the same hummidity level
@@221b-Maker-Street I grew up in the midwest, and some specific conditions have to happen.
When the temperature drops below freezing, the humidity drops to zero after a few days (which can be miserable; nosebleeds, itchy eyes, etc). If you can keep an area like a garage relatively warm or at least above freezing when low temperatures (close to or below freezing) dropped the ambient humidity, the conditions for evaporation are ideal. That's basically how freeze drying works, iirc.
A murderously hot summer in Texas or Arizona works, too. Note that in a town like Houston, TX it can be obscenely hot, but way too humid for evaporation to work.
Edit: I made some edits. Sorry if this is messing up your inbox, Maker-Street.
Save yourself some energy by purchasing a cheap office shreader and attatch to a wall high enough to have paper drop into a big bucket keep the long plastic bucket conneted to shreader as that protects fingers when shreading. A weakness thoughas when that fill the p a per tends to back up in shredder and jam. By cuttingthe bottom out it lets paper t hrough into your bigger bucket. With careful measuring you can plce ev e rytjing in such a way that there is no temptation to put fingers in from bottom to clear paper b jams from bottom while machine plugged in. Running the shredder in reverse also helps
That is a good idea thanks and thanks for watching have a good summer
If you're gonna do it long term maybe use an office paper shredder and one of those big blue barrels to maintain a paper slurry
Agree thanks for watching
Hi, great videos and something I’ve wanted to do for years now. You saved me years of suffering and experimenting thanks for sharing your experience. P.S if you have a link for them black leather fire gloves you have that would be great. Cheers 🍻
I think they were my old issued Army gloves. Thanks for watching
Another way to use the mixer that you use in this video would be to put it inside a piece of p. V. C with a clean out wye at the top. So that way it pulls the material from the bottom up the pipe and dumping it on the top pushing the unchopped material to the bottom.
Thanks for the tip and thanks for watching
Great video - thanks ! Just one question - I checked all my firewood and none of the wood logs have holes in them so why do we need a hole in the middle of the briquettes? 🙂
For air, you can try some without. Thanks for watching
How much easier way would it be to take your mixer and use an angle grinder to put some shredded edges on it Century going to get it wet ill shred that up if it gets soaked or better yet for like 60 to 100 bucks you can buy a shredder that can handle like half inch twigs and I will shred anything you'll need for this and it's so much faster
I did use a shredder in my new video. Thanks for watching
@@DIYJIM oh good bet it saved a lot of time I know it does for me.
If yoo put the bricks on a chicken wire rack to dry, they will dry much faster. A fan blowing on them helps too.
Thanks
Is it possible to salvage all that water or use watter that comes out of the washer mashine? I live in a place where water is not that abundant so I try to be as less wasteful as possible.
I would 100% think that would work
@@DIYJIM omg, ty man, cheers from mexico : D
I get that its free but it also looks like alot of work. I wonder if you can just shred the paper through like a harbor freight wood chipper that way you don't sit there ripping it up.
I did buy a shredder little easier
You need to get a small wood chipper roll up newspaper like little logs . Also magazines and cardboard . Sure goes faster .
Agree thanks for watching
Have you thought about after theyre dried getting a pot and melting wax to soak them in
No but that might work, you could at least do that may be on every 10th when you make
What would happen is you soaked the paper in vegetable oil instead of water, them tried to compress it into a log/brick? I watched a youtuber mix oil and sawdust and it burned well, but he did not press the mixture into a brick.
I've enjoyed your videos. Thanks for making them.
I’m sure that would work good, but would not dry into a brick. Maybe next winter
@@DIYJIM Good point. Think I'll try stuffing some oily paper into a paper towel or toilet paper roll, light it, and see what happens.
Would it be possible to build an oversized food processor & use a hydrolic ram to press???
I would love to see that
Great video! Thanks for idea!
Glad you liked it! Thanks for watching
Instead of using plastic pipe try using Bamboo cane It can even be the old stuff that is no use in the garden. Also paper from your shedder is a good source. Contact a local office and they will probably be glad to give you it. Visit a local joinery/carpentry company for your sawdust ,They usually have to pay to have it taken away
Thanks for the tips and thanks for watching
I did this a decade or more ago.
I used one of those '1 brick' models, though, and unless the quality is much better now, it's completely crap. I ended up using C-clamps on it to keep it from just 'spreading out'.
The instructions I had was to use newspapers, soaked and compressed without tearing up or even crumpling the paper. That did NOT work...
The second attempt was using a paper shredder. That works fine.
The briquettes takes weeks or months to fully dry.
And the briquettes burned up fast. 15minutes was the longest any of them lasted. And they burn badly. Newsprint is horribly bad quality. It leaves a lot of tarry residue in the chimney, so you will need to sweep it much more often or risk a chimney fire.
Frankly, I didn't find the result worth the effort.
Glossy paper or brown cardboard is probably worse.
Thanks for watching you should burn some wood also just to get your wood burner hot to keep creosote from building up. Just a fun experiment
@10:56 i would definitely make a use of the bench drilling machine and adapt tge mixing tool to it, it's definitely a game changer, i could even custom make a chopping tool for it and use it!
Wish you were my neighbor. Thanks for watching
@@DIYJIM Definitely, we would have cracked a few of those beers for sure!
If you use the drilling bench press... Use a vice or something to secure the bucket, like any improvisation be very cautious, I would not hold the bucket with all inside and run the mixing tool with it, could be dangerous.
Greetings from Vancouver Canada!
I have a ridiculous-sounding suggestion. Is it possible to convert these paper pulp bricks into charcoal?
Not sure never seen that done
I have a shredder for mine its how i get the bricks into tighter forms
I did that in my new video thanks for watching
Well i would like to make the cardboard ones as we have alot every week or so, but i cant get the brick maker shipped to me for some reason.
Hope you get it figured out. Where are you from?
Just roll them after you soak them in water, use normal rubber bands to hold it yoghter and you are done.
Thanks for tip
Would running the papers through a shredder help? Ok, so you answered that question.
I'm hearing some sort of music around the 13:45 mark. Kinda backgroundish. Also, at 15:00.
I would definitely think a paper shredder would help. Thanks for watching
Hey Jim, out of interest, how much do the bricks weigh roughly when dried?
sorry I really do not know, but very light.
No problem Jim, thanks for your reply. I'm wondering if a dry, tight roll of corrugated cardboard, which is quicker, would be as good. Thanks for your work.
Very interesting 😃
Thanks for watching
I would just crump the paper and mix kindling. Once the papper is gone I would through in a couple logs.
Thanks for watching
if you lived somewhere that's cold year round you could leave these wet and probably build with them, as you're basically making Pykrete bricks.
thanks for watching
Excellent tutorial!!!
Glad you liked it!
How has the brick press been holding up with use
Good so far thanks for watching
Drill few holes in bottom wood shelf to drain out water into bucket below better.
thanks for the tip and thanks for watching
Im thinking try running your product through a wood chipper
I tried running my mower or the newspaper but didn’t work to good lol
I am suprised you added it all together in each bucket then tried to shred and mix it all. I'm thinking thats a little Backwards Sir (I could be wrong).
Wouldn't adding Water to ALREADY FINELY SHREDDED PAPER work better? Infact using a Kitchen Blender would have been MUCH FASTER AND EASIER I think (could be wrong but my old 🥷 Ninja Blender could handle it I think).
After the pulp is made (water + Paper, Water + Cardboard) THEN add your Sawdust/woodchips in a bucket like the midway point of the video.
Always get your paper/cardboard to the finest/smallest parts tou can before mixing. Also simmering it on low heat in a big pot helps break down the fibre strength. I believe it would make the mixing/shredding you were doing in the buckets easier. Although I still think a blender would be best.
This will make it similar to wood pellets for being fine particles. Of course if you want yer bricks to have larger chunks the way you did it works fine.
Done my Arm Chair Coaching Now LoL. Thanks for sharing the video Sir!
thanks for the tips and thanks for watching
You could use a paper shredder to disintegrate the news papers.
Great idea thanks for watching
Wood pellets are just compressed sawdust. No point in wasting them if you've got a pellet stove. Just use sawdust in your bricks.
Agree they were not a good idea. Thanks for watching
Wouldnt the ink be toxic to burn?
A paper shredder works great
Agree I bought one.
A heavy duty paper shredder would make that job much easier.
Agree I just bought one
Unless they throw some really serious heat for a real long time it seems way more time consuming than just cutting up a log.
Agree with that just wanted to try it. Thanks for watching
@@DIYJIM it's tempting to try sawdust and used motor oil
@@JesseKlaus make a video I would like to see that. I think it would smoke a lot.
Depends on if you have any logs around or not.
Hobbies don't always make perfect sense. If you are buying wood, this would save you a little money. Maybe you could justify it that way. It would be good for people in the desert with not many trees
Use the jack they make alot better block i make these all the time
Thanks for the tip, thanks for watching
Nice idea. BUT - to be efficient you must have a good source of wasted paper. And when you calculate time and effort to make so many bricks that it will cut your heating costs significantly I doubt that it is effective. Better find an inexpensive source of firewood.
thanks for watching
I make Coffee Bricks for my wood stoves. it's a mix of saw dust and used coffee grounds. They burn 20-25% hotter and 20-25% long than firewood and they produce less smoke. They also cost me nothing to make, My brother works for a furniture builder and my local coffee shop saves their used coffee grounds for me, they also leave the coffee filters in it which I dry out and make wick starters out of. This will be my 3rd winter making them and even when it got -40 in January of 2023 we stayed nice and toasty in our house.
Thanks for sharing that, I may have to give that a try.
I’m really high. This just got better the more “soda” he had.
Thanks for watching
I think it would be a lot faster to shredder your paper with a dokument shredder.
Thanks for watching I agree
Is it healthy? I mean ink and other chemicals in it. Dunno may be for garage or other building but I wouldn’t burn it inside my living house.
I don’t burn in my house. Really I don’t breathe the smoke either. Thanks for watching
An industrial paper shredder would help also with this.
100% agree thanks for watching
I don't even bother ripping paper up. If you let the paper and cardboard sit in water for a few days, it works better.
Maybe I will try that, thanks
You should dry them atop the wood heater
Agree thanks for watching
I have made a crap load of these... Key thing is to run all the cardboard and paper throw a paper shredder 1st than soak them. trust me its way faster!!!!
Agree I’m going to try that
If you add salt, i might belt preserve then 🤷🏼
The first video i seen of yours, i think you mentioned some got moldy.
Thanks for watching my videos
Will this work in a wood stove?
Sure it will but not as good as wood. Thanks for watching
Thank you for your response. I used to go to the post office every night and take all the magazines to read. I have a very large commercial paper shredder now and I think I am going to build a press and make bricks for hard time survival. I think taking all the mail trash and shredding it would be valuable. I will leave the post office with an empty bag and I will have emergency heat and not have to cut wood. Where can I buy a brick mold? I will recover the water and use washing machine water to preserve my resources. I truly appreciate you. God bless you.
If you have have access to wood shaving, you can use wood ash instead
thanks