Bricking it

Today we had a little play with the newspaper-log-making machine that we got in the Cats' Protection League shop in Stourbridge on Wednesday. It was brand new, in its unopened box - a hopeful gift maybe.  Ever keen to discover new ways to get rid of old copies of the Guardian, we had, since Wednesday evening, been depositing them in a large bucket of water.

The basic device looks like this:

The mushy paper is piled in:

The insert placed over the top and pressure applied using leverage on the two crossed arms

A minor design fault becomes apparent at this stage, which is that the water squeezed out through the top of the insert has no means of escape and has to be tipped out - tricky whilst keeping the pressure up at the same time.

Once as much water as possible has been expelled, the insert is removed, followed by the whole liner, now containing a brick of compressed newspaper pulp.

This then has to be left to dry - I suspect that the manufacture of these things is an activity better suited to the summer months - although one would need to beware of sudden downpours, or you could have a right mess on your hands.

How long they will take to dry out, and how well they will burn remains to be seen, but rest assured I shall report back as soon as I know.

As you can see, we did also try to incorporate some old cardboard, which looks to have been rather less successful and is probably better avoided in future.