These are some rough notes:
- Soda cases do not break down well, even after a week long soak and agitation.
- Amazon paper bags do not break down well even after a week long soak and agitation. There are two types of Amazon bag, the double layer type with fluff and the single layer thicker tougher type. The double layer type breaks down well.
- Soda cases and highly coated paper and cartons smell awful in the initial burn. Once the secondary burn starts there is no odor.
- If the briquette is not fully dry it smokes a lot.
- Briquettes that are very compressed dry faster, though expand a bit when dry.
- Briquettes without a center hole dry faster but a center hole add more work and makes less mass to burn. A hole only makes sense on a briquette of a certain size. It does not make sense with mine.
- Cardboard breaks down really well after a week long soak.
- Amazon double layer bags with the white fluff break down well and the fluff adds in starch as a binder. Useful.
- Do not pack the shreds into the bucket when adding in water. Allow them to be loose and use more water for soaking and agitation than you think. This comes from papermaking, the extra water allows the paper fibers to beat against one another and stay longer which will form a better stronger tighter briquette. It is counter intuitive, but more water leads to less work. More water also puts less strain on the drill used for pulping. The water can be strained out and reused until it smells bad. I would not put this water down a drain, rather I’d dump it on my flower garden (not an edible garden unless you know all the paper types.)
- Brown paper grocery bags are excellent for shredding and pulping. we use ours for a lot around the house so I ONLY use those that get torn or damaged and none that have food spills.
- In a pellet stove all of these paper briquettes burn hot and quickly. I’ll have to weigh them at some point, but the fist sized briquette burned for about 20 minutes. It is hard to tell how long they burn for since the ash stays in shape until touched.
- What is left behind is a soft white ash and very little of it once scooped. Again I should weigh the resulting ash post burn. I suspect they burn about as well as pellets.