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[Robert Yarger]

I was just cleaning out the collection tray from belt sander (yes I don't always hook it up to a dust collector hose) and noticed the strong contrast in wood dust layers (whilte - purple - brown - orange - red).  It reminded me of those sand art sculptures that were so popular in the 1970's.

My thought is that, if we collect and clean out all the dust from our belt sander after each use and put the dust from each woodtype into separate bags, it could be saved for a unique form of art.

Personally, I am going to start saving mine back.  My plan is to build a wooden mold and apply layers of differnt colored sawdust (with glue) to it in lines until it makes a picture.  When it is dry, I will cut off slices of the picture to use as centerpieces of a puzzlebox line.  It would not be structurally strong, but if done right would be comparable to an inlay marquetry.  Anyway, I thought it would be very unique and you know how I like unique.

Also, you guys should be proud of me.  I have finally found something to use sawdust for besides growing mushrooms or making lye for soap.

If you do not have the desire to do something similar yourself, you could save back differnt colors of sawdust for me to make my project go faster.  I would buy it from you if you just took the time to keep each sawdust wood type separate.

   

[Kerry Verne]

I think you're two uses of sawdust ahead of most of us.

[Canuck]

That's a cool idea, I'll put mine aside for you, I tend to get a lot around the inside edges of my tablesaw and have kept both light and dark wood sawdust to fill cracks in penturning blanks.

[Robert Yarger]

Thanks John,

Also, just in case nobody gleaned that small tidbit of woodworking wisdom from John, keeping sawdust from the project that you are working on is excellent for patch fixing.  I use this method all the time for cracks or areas where wood has chipped off.  I mix the sawdust with glue and use it to patch the area, and if done properly you cannot even notice the flaw. 

The only thing, you sometimes have to put a bit of tung oil in the patched area to darken it before applying lacquer.  The patch area does not absorb lacquer as readily as the rest of the wood due to the glue and will stand out if not darkened in this manner. 

[Mark McCallum]

I have noticed this pattern of sawdust art many times when vacuuming under my table saw after sawing many types of wood into square or triangular sticks.  It is very interesting to look at.  Looks like a nice colored topographical map.  I've also noticed the rings of different colors when dumping my dust collector bag that I have directly connected to my planer.

[RKB]

Nice idea! Maybe I should see how I can keep mine. Rather 'unfortunately' I got stuck with a central dust extraction system. So it all (sawdust, shavings, small pieces of wood,...) comes together in that big, big can at the end of the line.

And no, I'm not a rich guy. I ordered me a lightweight $500 dust extractor, meant to take from machine to machine. But when I opened the package (which I found from the beginning was rather big), there was a something else in the box... A huge blue monster, weighing more than a 100 kilos and capable of sucking a brick at the end of a 10m hose. It was about a year later that I found out that these machines cost no less than $4000!!  (But I paid only the $500... nobody ever complained).

Because of its power, I decided to have some fixed pipes on the ceiling, descending at each of the machines. Groovy!!

[Canuck]

Wow, with that kind of suction power you could likely run a pipe over to my shop and pick up all my sawdust as well

[Scott Peterson]

And then run the exhaust line over to Oklahoma and no need to send sawdust to Robert - just blow it over there!   

Robert, please provide your latitude and longitude coordinates to Ry so he doesn't blow sawdust on your neighbor...

[RKB]

If you need the sawdust so badly, why don't you split George Bush's head?

[Canuck]

Yikes!! Careful we don't want 'homeland security' after us

[Robert Yarger]

Bush is full of something, but it ain't sawdust.

[RKB]

Bush is full of something, but it ain't sawdust.

At least I had the first letter correct 

[RKB]

A huge blue monster

I found some nice pictures of a 'Blue Monster' on the internet:

[Eric Fuller]

Wow, looks like a dust collector with built in fine particle filtration.  Very nice machine.  That's like ordering a volkswagon and receiving a ferrari.

[Stephen Chin]

I think thers a hole in your sawdust bag, or the mushroom spores have mutated and giving you halucinating delutions

Hey ,maybe thats the secret behind your incredible new puzzle turnovers

I use my saw dust for the rabbit and bird avairy. The 2 rabbits keep diging holes on the wire mesh floor, they hate Huon amd camphor shavings, and won't dig there.
No sand sculptures for me