Inside a large production facility at Marks-Miller Post and Pole in Clancy, an 18,000-pound Italian briquetting machine rhythmically compresses sawdust and wood chips into dense cylinders that burn twice as long as regular firewood.
Every five seconds, the contraption spits out another “Chippy Log,” a compressed log that glows while burning and packs about 40,000 BTUs (British thermal units, a measurement of heat energy) per pound.
“These logs burn similar to charcoal,” said Caleb Gardner, a project engineer who spent years developing the product alongside other employees. “They just kind of glow in the fire box. They don’t necessarily put out a lot of flame, but they are putting out a lot of heat.”
