Best way to make sawdust.

[John Brown]

I've seen a few people mention before how they have filled holes with a mixture of glue and sawdust. I have some small hole to fill in a piece of mahogany(or similar) and I have a few scrap pieces of a similar timber, so I was wondering about the most efficiient way of making and collecting sawdust. I have a bandsaw, a table saw, drill press, hand saws, rasps, routers, belt sander.

 

[RobinBHM]

Belt sander gets my vote.

 

[JakeS]

I was wondering about the most efficiient way of making and collecting sawdust. I have a bandsaw, a table saw, drill press, hand saws, rasps, routers, belt sander.

The result will be different depending on what tool you use.

The sander will produce very fine dust; the hand saw will produce quite coarse dust. I keep all my table-saw dust confined with extraction, but a hand-held circular saw produces really coarse shavings on dense woods, so maybe it's similar?

If I wanted to deliberately turn a bit of wood into sawdust for filling, I'd probably:
- clean out the bandsaw
- use it without extraction
- wear a respirator
- shave/nibble the edges of the wood away until there was next to nothing left (watch your fingers!)
- after finishing, run the wheels around a bit manually to un-cake the inevitable caked-on sawdust
- collect the huge pile of dust from the inside the bottom door
- sweep the not-inconsiderable pile of dust off of the table
- leave the doors and windows open and/or run your workshop filter for a while before venturing in without the respirator




The belt sander will make a lot of dust, but it'll be very fine - and therefore pack down a lot more if you try and fill stuff with it - and it'll be much harder to collect... most of it will be thrown across the room behind the workpiece and form a thin coat on more or less everything, even if you do use extraction with your belt sander.

 

[dzj]

Sift the table saw dust to get the needed particle size.
The size of the dust particles and amount of glue will determine the colour of the putty,
so a little experimenting is usually needed.
Gluing a similar piece of wood instead of the putty gives better results IMO.

 

[Alexam]

I find that the sawdust from my bandsaw is best for this as long as the bandsaw has been cleaned out first. I have a selection of plastic test tubes and fill each one with different coloured sawdusts to use at some future date.

Alex

 

[lurker]

I have a selection of plastic test tubes and fill each one with different coloured sawdusts to use at some future date.

Alex

It's nice to know there are others a barmy as I am!

 

[beganasatree]

Hi John,
I have just started to collect tubs of sawdust this week after cutting up some zebrano that had some voids that needed filling.I used the dust from the bandsaw and from hand sanding.

Peter

 

[John Brown]

Thanks for all the advice. In the end I trapped an old piece of flannel shirt beween the dust outlet on my Inca bandsaw and the vacuum pipe to catch the dust. Worked a treat. I didn't even have to clean out the bandsaw beforehand - just ran it for a bit with the vacuum on.

@djz. I will use real wood to fill the bigger hole, but this was for about a dozen very small holes,