Seth Robertson

Anyone have experience eating the seeds? My daughter loves them raw when they're green still. I looked it up you definitely can eat them. I tried cooking them to get rid of tannins and the bitterness. I wanted to make them like roasted Punkin seats or sunflower. Worked but it kinda stunk up the house. The hardest part I found was getting the sead out. Very time consuming and it made my hand fall asleep. Any easy way to do this?

A guy in Cancun made an entire floating island made of plastic bottles in recycled fruit mesh bags tied to broken pallets with sand and dirt on top then planted with Mangroves. He built a house on it with dirt and trash and has fruit trees galore. Pretty awesome I thought. He's got several YouTube videos. I had thought this would work on a smaller scale in a pond or river.

Seems like a no brainer to me, but I haven't heard of anyone else doing it. The recycling center near me has a small mountain of plastic bags filled with shredded paper that I can have for free. Seems to me that it would work the same if not better than straw. Cellulose is a better insulator than straw in general and recycled paper is more sustainable than straw.

I went back and read further. The information worries me about enclosing and insulating my space at all. For the last few years my carving area was outside behind the garage with 2 plastic windbreak walls and a plastic roof. I could carve in the rain/snow. I heated only my hands and feet with hand warmers and my dust mask kept my face fairly warm. I never had to clean anything except my carvings and my tools with my air gun. I finally made a giant compost pile out of all the sawdust and chips that were about a foot thick on the ground in that area. In a room that's enclosed my air gun cleaning method will send all the fine dust airborne sending me to a premature grave. That is unless I buy/build a super duper giant dust collector that moves 1000 cfm and has all the right filters and pipes. Sounds expensive even DIY. Though I did see a little crappy drawing on instructables.com showing something so simple it might just work. A blower fan(which I already have) sending dusty air through a container with water in it. The air bubbles up and the dust gets wet and stays. Maybe its too much resistance and will burn the motor. But one thing that Bill said on his site that suck out is that the fine wood dust lasts forever UNLESS it gets WET. One of my tools(angle grinder with 40 grit sanding disc) sends a massive amount of fine dust into the air and all over me. Might be more than I can contain. Maybe I just need to let it out to open air like I had been.
That being said, I still want to be warmer this winter and I still want a rocket stove. I was going to insulate the roof and walls and heat the whole room when I was working, but....Maybe instead I should design it to just heat me and only store the heat that is not radiating directly at me. I don't need it to be 72 degrees. With my mask and coveralls on I'd be sweating if it was more than about 50 or 60. Several times last Winter it got down to 10 degrees or less while I was out working and that was more than the hand warmers could handle. My feet were colder than my hands though so the heat should radiate from down low, or heat up what I stand on. Whatever I do I'll try to keep it simple and cheap.

The dust collecting part was just a side thought/benefit. Heat and safety is the main goal. I'd love to have a thousand bucks for a dust collection system, but it'll have to wait.

I am a wood carver who is building a workshop to be heated in the winter as many of my orders are for Christmas. My plan has been to build a RMH because all of the great things I've heard about it, and because I'll have an endless amount of small wood chunks. I also thought that the draft from the rocket's intake would suck wood dusty air in and burn it like a makeshift dust collector. I worry about fire hazards, i.e. dust settling nearby, around, and on top of the RMH(I have an airgun to blow dust away from rocket stove). Also I've heard if there is too much dust in the air a small spark could set off an explosion. What precautions should I make to make this thing safe? Any ideas?