Why is it....

[Leuf]

Why is it that projects designed to use up scraps end up producing more than they consume?

I've been on a three week long "use up the scraps" mission. With six small projects now either complete or ready for finishing I've put a nice dent in the yellowheart and canarywood scraps but barely scratched the surface of the oak, maple and pine. And now there is a new small mountain of baltic birch scraps at the foot of the workbench, a landslide from which could possibly kill me. The bench itself is completely covered in all the leftover pieces of scraps cut to the right thickness for the various projects, and that's not counting the box I put one set into which is now on the floor.

Another couple weeks of "using up the scraps" and I may not even be able to get to the bench anymore.

But it's been fun.

-Leuf

[Peter Huebner]

That's fractals for you ;-)

-P.

[J.]

Perhaps because, like myself, you are too reluctant to part with "scraps", particularly the really small ones?

I swear, I have to take up segmented turning one of these days...

J.

Leuf wrote:

[xcz]

Obviously your scraps are too big to begin with! :-)

[Leif Thorvaldson]

=====. You might think of putting in a infra red CCTV camera in the shop for nighttime coverage. Amazing what wood pieces can be up to in the night!! E.g., have you ever seen Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker?" *G*

Leif

[Leuf]

I sure hope not. About the biggest piece I started with, except for the plywood, was 2"x6"x3/4". The ply was mostly 12x12".

-Leuf

[Leuf]

Guilty. It's only trash if it's too small to hold while cutting/ sanding it, otherwise it must be good for something! Hence the trying to make a effort to use them.

The trouble is it's so much easier to take repeated cuts off a long board then try to sort through all the scraps to try to find enough that are big enough and then make half a dozen cuts on each of them, most of which you have to find some inventive way of doing safely just to get one piece out of it.

-Leuf

[FoggyTown]

Yeah. I married her. (boom boom) But seriously, folks . . .

I find that when I get enough scraps I start thinking about ways to use them inventively. Think of a project that has significant flat planes (like a night stand, blanket chest or whatever) and mosaic the scraps in a patchwork fashion. I found the best way to do this is plane all the scraps to the desired thickness and then glue them on

8mm or 10mm ply panels then cut as desired to make sides, drawers, tops, etc. It does give a real nice effect.

[Leuf]

get through the planer (if I had one) or even the drum sander by themselves (I tried, very bad things happened). So I ran everything through the bandsaw first, glued up into panels, then ran the panels through the drum sander on both sides. Here's the result with just one sealer coat of shellac:

shellac was a near disaster as the bloodwood was wanting to bleed (no pun intended) like crazy, and even some of the canarywood which I've never seen it do. I'm still debating whether to sand it back down and just go straight to the varnish like I normally do.

Other scrap projects that were not so technically challenging, except for the bazillion angles on the stars:

be a clock. That's a few hundred walnut screw plugs. I made one of these on a lark last year before the holidays, and while my holiday sales were dismal that was the one thing people wanted more of. Go figure.

is where I started to get in trouble with the mountain of plywood scraps. Not only are there the front and back pieces of plywood actually used in the stars, but I had to make jigs to help line up all the scraps. I could have glued up a big panel of scraps and cut the star out of it, but then I'd have more scraps left and I think it looks better this way.

-Leuf