How much wood should a wood hoarder hoarde?

[sawdustmaker]

Help! I have a (wood) shorts problem. Polling the group to see how small a (normal, non interesting) cut off should be saved. I have many pieces as small as 3/4 x 4 or 1/2 x 8. Should I toss em?

[Bill]

Only toss "most" of them--just in case! ; )

[Ed Pawlowski]

If they are oak, maple, walnut, or cherry, they go into the smoker. I keep a few pieces that small, but not many.

[G. Ross]

I have a wooden box (about 18" cube) where I keep my cutoffs. If they are less than 1 ft. long OR if the box is full they get trashed. It is handy to have something to confirm the height of a router bit or the size of a drilled hole for it's intended purpose, etc. But enough is enough.

[krw]

Do you use small pieces (for spacers, or whatever)?

That's a good solution. If they're in the box for any period of time, you probably don't use that sort of cut off. It's sort of the "clean house" mentality - If something hasn't been used in a couple of years, pitch it. s

[Bill Gill]

And the next day realize that that piece you tossed is just what you suddenly need.

Bill

[dadiOH]

No. You should glue them together to make bigger pieces. Keep at it and you'll eventually have a really BIG piece. Use that to make something but save the offcuts and start over :)

[Brewster]

Cutting/bread boards. Always a popular gift. Each year I dig through my

4 33-gallon trash cans of cutoffs (stuff that is over 8" or so in length and/or long and skinny, useful for face frames) and I cull out maybe 50% for the wood stove and cutting boards.

All smaller pieces get tossed into a large drum for heating during the winter.

Basically I feel if I paid for it, I'll use it one way or another...

-BR

[Electric Comet]

what is the first thought that comes to mind when you look at the cutoffs

answer that and you have your answer

[graham]

I'm faced with that now as I'm trying to downsize. However, it is a variant of Murphy's Law that if you throw out odd pieces, one of them would have been useful the following week. A few years ago I built a mobile stand/cabinet for my turning tools with "holes" for drawers to hold chucks and odd tools. I thought that I had all sorts of Baltic plywood in the garage until I looked. Then I remembered that a few months before, I had chucked out all that "scrap". Graham

[Leon]

Plain and simple, keep until it becomes an obstacle.

[Mike Marlow]

...or until you need kindling wood.

[Sonny]

Obstacles? I've dug through my caches, among the obstacles, there, to get to better scraps, for the pieces I wanted. My shop has a few tools that can be described as obstacles, at times.

I toss unused/scrap pieces onto the lumber racks, to the point that, smalle r pieces eventually fall through the greater pieces, onto lower sections. Those fallen pieces become a pain to deal with, sometimes. There's a des ignated scraps area, among the racks, as well.

I have a few caches I deal with: Interior & exterior caches at the main s hop, and there are trash cans I load with firewood and, sometimes, end up s ifting through that, for something. The older shop is essentially a lumbe r, prospective/repair projects, misc. stuff, & scraps storage building, the se days.

Two years or so ago, Jonas and the boys came over to clean the shop. Tosse d out almost everything they considered trash. We bundled it up and poste d on Craigslist "free birdhouse/small projects wood".... also a free work b ench. Had several takers. The shop's about due for another cleaning.

Sonny

[Swingman]

Aye, the First Immutable Law of Wooddorking ...

Followed shortly: by One Trip to Hardware Store - Hah!

[Puckdropper]

Mike Marlow wrote in news:nlbfko$1oh$ [e-mail]:

I have a "fire scraps" bin that gets emptied and burned every so often. If I need a test piece for something, I just grab it, do whatever it was (usually drill or plane) and toss it back in.

Now if you have contrasting woods, you can glue them together as turning blanks. Make sure you use enough clamping pressure, it's important that the joints be tight. (It wouldn't hurt to joint the edges first.) You may even get some interesting patterns alternating grain direction of the same wood. This is not a "someday" use of the wood, either do it or bin it.

Puckdropper

[Puckdropper]

Swingman wrote in news:nLCdndIfy42wxeTKnZ2dnUU7- [e-mail]:

I thought #1 was "measure twice, cut once, go to the store, you read the tape on the wrong side of the inch mark twice."

I know--story sticks. But sometimes my story sticks tell tall tales.

:-)

Puckdropper

[krw]

"I cut that board three times and it's *still* too short!" ;-)

It's always the tape or the stick, right?

[krw]

Oh, sure. OTOH, if you keep everything you probably can't find what you need (and know you have somewhere), anyway.

[DerbyDad03]

Measure with a micrometer Mark with chalk Cut with an ax