Mushroom Question.

Near my home there is a saw mill that cuts mine timbers. All they cut is the different species of oks in the Appalachians. They sell oak sawdust for $25 a ton. Would wheat paste like grandma used for wall paper paste be a good binder to use to make synthetic shitake logs?
I am trying to use a resource here with out getting into the the artificial side of things.

they typically just bag it for the first run, once it has been sterilized.

I have no idea on the wheat paste, it might be too much food, and let other molds grow too strongly. better do a test.

Shiitake is commonly grown commercially on hardwood (including oak) sawdust blocks that are supplemented with extra nutrients such as wheat bran, oatmeal or rye bran. The mixture is moistened and packed into heat-tolerant plastic bags, sterilized and inoculated with either grain or sawdust shiitake spawn. The shiitake bags or "blocks" are then placed in an indoor, controlled-climate room for the spawn run. After a few months of growth, the blocks are forced into fruiting by watering them and raising the humidity in the grow room. As the previous poster stated, the more nutritional supplements that are added, the greater the risk of contamination problems. I strongly recommend that anyone attempting this method should first read and study "Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms" by Paul Stamets. I also suggest that people purchase fresh spawn from Field and Forest Products (fieldforest.net), as this company has a lot of different strains of high-quality shiitake spawn to choose from. Good luck with your project! (Be sure to check out the "fungi" category of threads on this website as well.)

Greetings, I would try that paste! Yesterday we ground up whole grain, it turned to paste when mixed with water, and mixed it with cardboard. We added oyster spawn, look forward to seeing how it does, we did the same and mixed with vermiculite a few days ago, it seems to be doing better than some of the other mixes we did the same day. Good luck with what you are doing.