Woodshop waste as heat

I've been woodworking a little while now and was wondering if anybody has found an economical way of turning sawdust and scrap wood in to heat.  I make enough waste to heat my shop through the winter but have never found a good way to turn it into heat.  Wood stoves tend to burn this material too hot and too quickly, even with ash, oak, and hard maple.  Currently I use propane and kerosene for my shop through winter.  I've thought about pelletizing and using a pellet burner, but that has a high cost I'm not ready to jump into.  The shop is about the size of a car and a half garage and well insulated.  Wouldn't take much.

I'm sure more people will be along to advise you later, but I'd recommend checking out rocket mass heaters and also this thread about how Paul is attempting to heat his home all winter with just cardboard and garbage

The rocket mass heater may be just the ticket.

I have heated my shop with a woodstove for over 30 years and it requires so little wood that I just can't justify the switch. My shop is well insulated as well. Between all the large machines, metal clamps and copious amounts of wood waiting for a project there is a large amount of mass to help with temperature swings. My scrap and sawdust wouldn't be anywhere near enough to heat the shop. But I use the woodstove to turn all my scraps and dust into biochar for the garden. I burn about 1/2 cord of firewood per year. And produce about 80 gallons of biochar.
I bring up the mass because it plays an important part in the equation. If you only use the shop occasionally the temperature can drop and then you're going to be trying to reheat all that mass. If you fall into the occasional use category you might be better off just heating yourself. Radiant heater or just a heavy layer of clothes. Then on glue up or finishing days get the shop up to working temps.

A sawdust stove is a purpose built gasifying stove that burns for hours on a single load.

Here's a link to the playlist I made while researching them:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUQMDg9HfMjh4aofzELdfkm-1__xwAivD&si=I8qggVgc-KVCRPvK

You also might want to try making the sawdust into charcoal in your wood stove.

Hers a short video on how :

William Bronson wrote: A sawdust stove is a purpose built gasifying stove that burns for hours on a single load.

Here's a link to the playlist I made while researching them:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUQMDg9HfMjh4aofzELdfkm-1__xwAivD&si=I8qggVgc-KVCRPvK

You also might want to try making the sawdust into charcoal in your wood stove.

 

This is genius! Never seen that before and the venting in my shop is perfect for this. And I hadn't considered turning it to charcoal.

I wonder about creating a slow burn with sawdust in a wood stove.

If was put in with alternating layers of dry char, and burned from the top down, would that give steady heat?

Unfortunately I can't test this. I can't get sawdust any more. It's all collected for making wood pellets.