 When I'm making a fire in the wood stove, I like to put down a few buckets of sawdust and then make the fire on top of that because that way the sawdust will burn away just fine as long as there's wood on top. Now I've got an established fire but if I were to just dump sawdust on top of that, it would smother the flames. But if I put the sawdust in in the box, then it'll be just fine. This method can't be used to burn all sawdust. I can burn maybe one third sawdust but it's a one-win situation because it gets through the sawdust and it saves firewood. One challenge with this whole approach is finding enough paper bags and cardboard boxes to put all the sawdust into.