sheet good cutoffs

Stacked against the wall organized by thickness and or size ;-)

I like the idea behind this but I don't have 9' of wall space to waste.

I have a small wood rack that hangs from the ceiling above the garage door. it is wide and long enough that a full sheet of 5 x5 and or 4 x 8 plywood will go in easily. The rack is about 8-9" tall. I try not to keep over 2 full sheets of 3/4" at any time to keep the weight down. Typically I have several pieces of 1/4 and 1/2". Smaller than 1/3 sized sheets lean against a wall behind my roll out equipment.

"dadiOH" wrote in news:xoc4j.742$RB.314@trnddc03:

A cardboard box that a office chair came in holds most of them. It's wide and narrow (about 30" by 10"), so it holds most the plywood cut offs I have pretty nicely.

A simple wood box (or frame) 4' wide could do the same thing. As long as you keep it no more than about 85% full you can "flip through" the sheets like a book.

Puckdropper

If they are small enough (

I built a lumber rack years ago from plans in ShopNotes. It is built using 2x4s with slightly slanted holes where iron pipe fit. The (optional) bottom half is a triangular swing out (riding on a rubber wheel with hinges on the other side like a door) compartment capable of holding several full 4x8' sheets. I keep my larger sheet cutoffs there. What I find a problem is storing curved cutoffs.

standing on their side, with room in the "sidesaddles" for the resultant mess of cutoffs. See it here in the workshop folder:

share your frustration about scrap storage. At an avg cost of $1.08/ sq ft, those cut-offs are too pricey to throw out [initially] but there are only so many fillers, blocks, jigs, test cuts, and push sticks I can use. So, when the need for space in my tiny shop exceeds my thriftiness, those pieces become pricey land fill.

The problem extends to hardware, too. I'll have ten screws or a pound of nails or something left over from a job, and they go into a container. Then the containers stack piling up...dozens of different cans, boxes, bins and jars filled with a few odds and ends. Too nice to throw out, too few to be of use.

Keep posting, guys/gals...there are some packrats reading these boards hoping to detect a glimmer of light at the end of a REALLY cluttered tunnel :0)

Sat, Dec 1, 2007, 12:25pm (EST+5) snipped-for-privacy@guesswhere.com (dadiOH) doth query: How do you folks store all those cutoffs from sheet goods?

This is a trick question, right? I don't store them as such, I use them - to make kigs, shop stands, projects, prototypes, etc. I also accept sacrifices for the Woodworking Gods, so feel free to send them along.

JOAT Even Popeye didn't eat his spinach until he had to.

Re: hardware storage, I buy nails and screws in big economy sized lots. Then I have an entire shelf, floor to ceiling, loaded with bins. In my case, they are cardboard bins that are 1-3" wide, 4" high, and about 12" deep. They each hold at least a pound of nails. I have a few dozen of them and one day went thru all of my hardware. Nails on this shelf, organized by size and type. Decking screws on this shelf, ditto. Drywall screws, ditto. Bolts with related nuts and washers on that shelf. It took a full day, but they are sorted. Anything less than a small handful didn't make the grade and was thrown in the recycling bin. Small expensive stuff, such as stainless steel hardware that I use in my work, goes into those flat translucent trays that hold fishing lures. Plano, or whoever has them on sale. A shelf holds them, upright, like a row of books. They generally have a label on the spine identifying the contents and they are generally organized for like hardware in each tray. Dividers can be moved as necessary. My one learning experience was to try not to fill up the trays with too many different doohickeys in each tray. It's better to have a few extra trays, with larger compartments, with more individual parts in each compartment, than to try to put the dividers 1/2" apart and try to have two or three of everything in one tray. My example here is the many various types of crimp-on electrical connectors. Spades, rings, males, females, each one with a red, green, or yellow size. There are dozens of combinations. Try not to put them all in one tray. With a packrat as dedicated as I am, it takes discipline and perseverence, but it can be done. (Also, don't be afraid to throw a few odds and ends away.)

My compliments on your rather impressive work. The woodworking section photos showed some very nice work, down to even the pool ball triangle.

Renata

Thank you! Perhaps I should update the site. Tom