Creative ways to get rid turning chips

[Michael Schneider]

I find I do heavy turning in the fall and winter. I live in a suburb, with no farms to drop off shavings near by.

I have a mulch trail through my garden in the back yard, and plenty of flower beds to accept mulch.

In the busy turning time of the year, I exceed the capacity of my yard to receive mulch. I usually put it in contractor bags and ship it off with garbage.

Anyone have other ways to get rid of turning shavings?

Thanks
Michael

[Bob Bouis]

It's not very creative, but take them to the dump. Gives you an opportunity to scavenge for new wood!

[Aaron Craven]

What you want to do is compress them really hard with some glue. Then sell them to big box retailers to make furniture out of.

[Charles Wiggins]

Smoking meat?

[Geoff Crimmins]

The town I live in has big bins at the recycling center where you can drop off yard waste such as tree branches, leaves, grass clippings, etc. They chip it and make it available as mulch. I leave my turning chips there.

--Geoff

[Steve Nix]

Bag them and sell them in Craig's list. 🤔

[Thomas Canfield]

I have a friend that lives out of town that takes my bagged shavings and returns the empty bags. I usually will have 6 to 10 bags that he spreads as mulch around fence and then fruit trees to conserve water.

[Olaf Vogel]

Michael

Not sure how big your town is, but here's what I do in Toronto (4 million Canucks and a lot of scavengers).
We have a local version of CraigsList (called kijiji, its a Canadian subsidiary of eBay)

I place an ad for:

"Landscape materials - FREE!
Clean chips, for use in your garden, pathways, hamster cages, etc.
Pick up any time while the ad is up at: <Address>"

Then I put all the chips in paper leaf bags and put them at the curb.

All the stuff is gone by morning.

EASY

[Ralph Lindberg]

We don't do a lot of chip-mulching, but we have friends that do. We try to restrict those bags to maple, alder, madrone and fruit woods, but not walnut or butternut.
We also have friends that pit-fire, they get the bags with exotics and nuts-woods mixed in.
If we really had to the county has a tree-waste dump just down the road we could drop them off for mulching with the trees.

I do bag some dry chips in large (old) zip-locks to start campfires.

[Ryan Mooney]

I found a potter who does pit fired pottery and uses them as part of the firing process. Good for me, good for her

[Bill Jobe]

What you want to do is compress them really hard with some glue. Then sell them to big box retailers to make furniture out of.

I like your thinking.

[Brice Rogers]

Find someone who is a gardener or find a gardening club. Many gardeners would love to get shavings.

I've been putting mine into plastic trash cans, add some water, add some nitrogen (to speed up decomp) and cover with plastic. In a couple of months everything is a dark brown and it smells like fresh dirt. Ready for the garden or beds. But, I've got some acreage and am not at risk of running out of places to put the stuff.

[Keith Outten]

I used to sell my planer chips to a local horse farm. They paid me 5 bucks per 30 gallon trash can full of chips delivered. In those days I produced enough chips to pay the electric bill on my shop every month. Obviously they didn't accept walnut chips.
.

[John K Jordan]

Is there a horse haven rescue organization in your area? If you don't have a way to haul they might come and haul away chips (if there is no walnut).

[Robert Willing]

All of my chips go in to my dust collector from the entire shop. I have two means of disposal of into the woods (I have 41 acres of woods) b) I give them to an egg farmer and he uses them for bedding, sometimes he gives me eggs for my chips.