shopmade bricquette maker

[Chippy]

The hardest part is getting the briquette out of the mould you wont be able to push it out by hand I used a 3" x 3" mould and had to knock them out with the hammer shaft.

 

If was to try again I would make the mould with angle iron welded around the base so this could be used as a support bracket and so use the press to extract the briquette.

 

Hope this helps

[tommytopsoil]

If you don't try you'll never know - sometimes that curiosity just has to be satisfied!

 

And if it doesn't work then I'll buy the press...

[Mike Dempsey]

That's the way I am looking at it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

[Stubby]

I use the ram of the bottle jack to push mine out . I helps if you make the " mold " with some draft angle . ( tapered sides )

[gensetsteve]

There isn't anyone local to me who makes briquettes. The whole point of the exercise is to use up waste already in the workshop and instead of storing it in bags, to minimise the amount of space it takes up by converting it to briquettes. This is going to be done it the true spirit of British bodging by converting a machine into using it for another purpose. The press isn't going to cost me anything apart from 30 minutes of my time in going to pick it up. The steel plate I can get free or for pennies. I have 2 good metal chop saws and a mig welder. My hero is Fred Dibnah and I admired his skills , knowledge and ability to make anything from scrap. I don't know how long it would take to make briquettes with the press but I am not going into this to sell them, just use them in my stove myself and give some to a couple of mates who will help me churn them out. If it works quite well I may investigate how to automise the process but that is not for the first stage. Its all experimental at this stage and it may not work, who knows. If it doesn't work I can always flog the bearing press!

 

Yes I was not trying to put it down. If you get pleasure tinkering with it great. You may even discover something that has been missed in the process before. As you say its not a business. In the last 3 months I have seen 3 people with families invest 25k of their redundancy on junk from china to make bricks. I give my saw dust and offcuts to them in the hope they can make it pay and support their families.

[bigdave]

good old youtube has come up trumps with a design for you!

 

 

 

looks time consuming but better than throwing away a good heat source if you have enough spare time!!!

[Mike Dempsey]

very interesting Dave. Thanks for the link. There's some amazing ingenuity out there. Think I will start with a one briquette at a time press. The ones who do quite a few at a time seem to mix their sawdust/paper with water which is easier to press and then have to dry them out. I don't really want to be messing about with water in the workshop as I am trying to keep the atmosphere as dry as possible as I have stacks of dried timber in there and I don't want to redry them again.