what shop scraps to save in your shop?
davidraynalds | Posted in General Discussion on
After a week of reorganizing and cleaning my shop, I got to wondering how other woodworkers decide what cut-offs to save and what to haul to the recyclers? I ended up throwing these things away . A four inch bundle of 6x24x 1/4″ radiata pine, six 4×10 pieces of 1/2″ baltic birch, etc, etc,etc. Does anyone out there have a good rule of thumb that would be a good guide for a small one man shop? What do you throw away that you have had regrets about.
Dave Raynalds
Replies
I usually keep any solid wood that is larger than 6" x 18" and any plywood that is one foot square or larger. The rest is tossed into a 50# bird feed bags that a neighbor furnishes and he uses the wood in his out door wood burning furnace in the cold weather. He gets everything that can be burned. This past year he got over 30 bags of scrap.
Dear David,
It all goes in the woodstove. IF I keep anything ,and I have had it a year, it is gone.
Best,
John
I save almost anything longer than 3".I have lathe so many short pieces can be turned.Right now I probably have at least four milk crate size boxes of what usually is firewood.My wife thinks I'm a packrat,she's right.
mike
Depends on how creative one is.
Cheap materials can encourage taking chances one might never take with expensive materials.
Gord Peteran is just one such woodworker/artist...
http://www.cranbrookart.edu/museum/peteran.html
Good link -- interesting stuff. Thanks.
Pterans book "Furniture meets it's maker" is great. I'd seen his stuff over the years but never realized it was made by the same person. Anything published by the Furniture Society is a good read
http://www.furnituresociety.org/frames/fpublicat/home.shtml
Unrelated but very interesting is the Cinderella table by Demakersvan
http://www.demakersvan.com/
Sounds like most people do as I have been doing. Save the pieces until recycling time and then judge whether to keep them. I had hoped that some one would have had a clever rhyme that I could repeat in my head the next time judgment day came for a scrape of Baltic birch. Thanks for all the replies
Dave Raynalds
Dave,
Just thought this one up:
Should I keep this piece of scrap?
Or is just a just a piece of crap.
The day I finally through it out,
will be the day I'll be without.
Regards,
Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Edited 10/19/2007 8:45 pm ET by KiddervilleAcres
Excellent!
Dave Raynalds
Dave,
I'm a poet and didn't know it and my feet show it cause they're LongFellows!
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Bob
Did you leave a word out?? {Day}??
dan
dan & Dave,
You are most precise dan. In my haste to post I middes a day, and typing is obviously not my forte (I'll figure out how to make the proper e for that). Thanks for catching it.
Dave, you may want to check back as I edited my original post. Just so's you'll know, Dan makes some of the finest gunstocks that the shooters have ever had the pleasure o resting a chin agin.
Thanks dan!
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
That's too generous Bob. If you ever find the time to come down from the Granite State on the last weekend in July to make it to Kempton PA, you'll find my stuff in the junk pile behind the port-a-potty. Any time my head gets big, I just pack it up and head to the Dixon Gunmakers Fair. The talent and workmanship is so good you go home and get to it.
Keep lookin' for that really curly piece of sugar maple.
Dan
Our good friend Bob gave me some inspiration;
should it stay or should it go,
this is something I don't know,
I guess that I'll just put it here,
figure it out in the coming year.
Chris...who's nose is Frost-ed
should it stay or should it go,this is something I don't know,I guess that I'll just put it here,figure it out in the coming year. And then again I'll just keep it near,and figure it out in a few years!
;-)
Should I keep this piece of scrap?Or is just a just a piece of crap.The day I finally through it out,will be the day I'll be without.But then again I saved the other stuff ..
I could do not without!
I find scraps and off cuts are very useful for all sorts of things:
- they come in handy for making disposable jigs
- I use exotic bits for inlay, knobs, etc.
- I use bits to make drawer dividers and tailored tool holders in drawers
- thin off cuts from ripping can be chopped into squares for clamping pads
- longer offcuts make great cauls
- plywood offcuts are useful for things like bandsaw sleds when resawing small logs or and high fences when resawing wide stock
- with my LN dowel plate, I can make scraps into dowels for pegging
The list goes on and on, but for the most part, things have to get pretty small before I chuck them.
Woodworking Truth #9:
The scrap you through out is the one you'll need.
****
I usually keep scraps in a bucket until it gets full then I take a few minutes to cll through it. Anything that I deem unusable at that time gets thrown into the firewood box. So what's unusable? Depends on the wood. The more common the wood, the large it can be. Some small scrap I save for the lathe, but for the most part it has to be big enough for me to make a box out of using power tools. So lets say a minimum of 12" long, by 4"... Thickness doesn't matter fo rthe most part.
As a side note, hardwood makes great cooking campfires in the summer. We'll often head out to the mountains for a weekend, and I carry my firewood scraps just for that purpose.
buster
It depends upon what type of projects you do. If all you do is make entertainment centers, there's only so much you can turn into glue blocks.
If you are making small boxes, jewelry, or turned pens, every little scrap looks like a box lid, ear ring, or inlay.
Like others suggest, I keep a scrap bin and when it fills up, I empty it.
David: I, too, hate to part with small pieces that I just know will be the ones I need as soon as I throw them out. I grappled with this problem for years until I came up with a method that works... Choose a container or shelf area or some defined space that limits the number of pieces you will keep. When it fills up, decide what goes. My bucket is filled with really good stuff, and I can find the scrap I need when I need it.
Bob K
Ahhh...I put all the smal pcs. I THINK might be useful one day into a pile. Then I throw the smaller 50% on to the burn pile.
I think just about EVERYTHING might be useful some day....
I gave a box of small hardwood to a model ship builders group.
Several months later, I saw some of the net results.
spectacular work in very small sizes.Ron
David
These guys sound very logical and organized. I'm on the other end of the spectrum. I just can not throw wood away. I save old baseball bats and make tool handles on the lathe. I am tripping over some of the walnut I have from a storm that hit NC 12 years ago. I just like looking at it. I'm cursed. If the wood isn't bad enough, I have 25 brass door plates for the patchboxes I will make if I live to be 110.
Really, its probably better to get some of the junk out of the way so you can think and move without all of the clutter. Everybody is a little different and its what makes you feel good.
You will never find a group associated with kids that won't take wood from you. When I'm frustrated with the mess, I cut 25 or 30 little tool boxes for kids and donate the drywall screws. You want a laugh.. I'll send you a picture of 30 cub scouts holding their tool boxes.... before they painted them. Ha.
If I walk into a woodshop without a healthy pile of scraps, I doubt the owner does any actuall woodworking. Scraps are a defining characteristic of a woodshop, we all have them regrdless of what tools we own.
Buster,
I have been working on an idea with the folks from Festool. We are developing the concept of a "Wood compactor" which will enable woodworkers to use all scraps, regardless of size, including sawdust. There will never be a need to throw anything out again. The Wood Compactor is a hydraulic and gas powered press that turns scraps into a new type of pressed wood that can be turned into "Dominos", thus reducing the cost of uring your Festool Domino machine.At the present time, the Engineering Model of the Wood Compactor takes up a small room and costs about $140,000 but we are expecting to get it down to the average cost of any normal Festool soon. Please let me know if you would like to be a Beta-tester. The noise is a bit high, and the machine needs to be vented using a 300 foot chimney, but we feel that potential gains are there.MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled