At what point would you toss out scrap lumber?
I'm looking at my work area and I have a ton of 1x1x4 and 1/2x1x8 cedar strips and little odds and ends 2x4's and a half dozen other bits and pieces. At what point would you start tossing, burning, or otherwise getting rid of that stuff? What would you consider a useful board from your scrap pile.
I make small blocks and toys from my scraps, so if it is more than 3 cubic inches, it goes in the to be "toy" bucket. When the bucket is full, I start making toys.
Saving cutoffs is directly proportional to your storage arrangement and capacity, coupled with the quality of the wood involved. Each person is very different. If you cannot envision a project for the fall off, if you have never used anything "that size" for a project, then get rid of it. Be aware, within one week of tossing the fall off you will find something for which it would have been perfect.
If you can't keep it straight, if you can't find it, if you have to move tons of stuff to see what you have it has virtually no value.
Sat, Jul 21, 2007, 9:19am (EDT-3) m44 snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com (Eigenvector) doth wondereth: At what point would you toss out scrap lumber? I'm looking at my work area and I have a ton of 1x1x4 and 1/2x1x8 cedar strips and little odds and ends 2x4's and a half dozen other bits and pieces. At what point would you start tossing, burning, or otherwise getting rid of that stuff? What would you consider a useful board from your scrap pile.
Ah yes, the mythical scrap wood. I've heard of it, but don't have any. I've got sawdust, and small pieces of wood, no scrap wood, unless you want to call the sawdust scrap, but I save some of that for trasction in the winter, and sometimes to make wood filler. Anything larger than sawdust is a small piece of wood.
If you want to get in good with the Woodworking Gods, you can send along some of the so-called "scrap" wood you seem so anxious to get rid of, as a sacrifice for them. As their High Priest I handle all their administrative work, including sacrifices, don't try this at home. I think they'd appreciate some of the cedar. Or, you can keept it, and piss them off.
JOAT I do things I don't know how to do, so that I might learn how to do them. - Picasso
I keep anything that I think I would use again. This includes small cuttings of thin plywood or sheet stock for clamp pads, various plywood thicknesses that one cannot buy any more, rare items and expensive stuff.
I toss nothing, some gets cut up for garden stakes, some become small paint stir sticks for 1 litre cans and smaller, the rest become kindling for my wood stove.
Eigenvector wrote: | At what point would you toss out scrap lumber? | | I'm looking at my work area and I have a ton of 1x1x4 and 1/2x1x8 | cedar strips and little odds and ends 2x4's and a half dozen other | bits and pieces. At what point would you start tossing, burning, | or otherwise getting rid of that stuff? What would you consider a | useful board from your scrap pile.
I have a whole web page dedicated to a project to use up 1x4 and 2x4 scraps at
Glue up your 1x1 and 1/2x1 stuff for cutting/cheese boards, trays, and turning blanks. If you don't have a lathe but accumulate a large supply of blanks, you'll have an excuse to shop for an inexpensive lathe to use 'em up.
Scrap is a short word for "opportunity to convert waste into good will", a commodity rarely in oversupply.
-- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA
Small pieces of hardwood, you soak in water, wrap in foil, and toss on the barbecue with good, thick pork chops.
I have three Rubbermaid waste baskets in three sizes for different sizes of scrap. When they are full, I look through them quickly and burn the less useful pieces to make room for better new stuff.
I define full according to whether most of the pieces I toss from halfway across the shop stay in or on the waste basket. I have to force myself to not think too much about value and possible use so my scraps will save me time rather than costing me time (Hi, my name is David and ...).
I usually still have shit on every horizontal surface in the shop, but it was worse before I went to the waste basket scrap "system".
PDX David
On the sixth Tuesday of every month ending in "g", but then only during the second vernal equinox.
Well that's an interesting option I hadn't thought of - cutting boards, shame cedar's so soft, but still a bunch of 1x1 strips glued together into a nice board or serving platter even.
Honestly most of my scrap is incorporated into my workbench, minor repairs and filling in gaps and whatnot.
When it takes more time to wade thru it than you are willing to invest.
Lew
Hey, I confess. I have a load of scrap lumber. I start tossing it out when I need more room. For the most part, I toss out anything smaller than a cucumber, PT cut offs, 2x4s shorter than 6 inches, pieces older than 2 years, or oddly-shaped pieces. If you don't sort your scraps it can take too much time to get the size you need.
Yep, pretty subjective based on storage space, estimated future need and the degree of your obsessive/ compulsive disorder. I wait until I'm too swamped with them and then I throw whatever is too short or anything I've already used as a backer for drilling, etc. I keep a little of everything but just a little. The first couple of weeks are usually traumatic with occassional trips to the burn pile for visits and exercises in restraint (from 'rescuing' a few).
I know the feeling
Anything that has potential as a turning blank or stock for toys that our Guild builds for needy children goes into a bin that I take to a Guild meeting for the turners and toy makers to forage through. None of that goes back home with me. The rest of it - well, we have a free day at the landfill twice a year. So, twice a year I go through the scraps and toss what I don't think I'll ever use into the pickup for the trip to the landfill. The rest gets lucky and is recycled for another 6 months. I hate to take it to the landfill, but I have no other outlet for it. Down here in the deep south we don't have wood burning stoves in our shops! I work in December and January with the shop door open.
Murphy's law seems to state that I will not need a piece of scrap until the day after I burn it..
After years of battling Mr. Murphy, I have a sorting system which still doesn't work, but makes me feel better:
If it's firewood for sure, it goes in boxes in the yard by the BBQ and fire pit...
If I think it's probably firewood, it goes into a stack under the band saw, in case we run out of firewood and being a firebug, I run into the shop looking for "something else to burn"..
Most of the other stuff goes on racks and shelves and is burned selectively when the other 2 options are exhausted..
mac
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Do you have any woodworker friends who make small projects? Some of it might be just what they are looking for. Maybe you can make a trade or at least make another woodworker friend very happy.
Charley
To be honest I'm the person they run to when they finish working projects. So I typically end up with my very few project scraps (I just don't do a lot of wood working), plus all theirs - any they are much less efficient with their projects than I am. Nothing I hate more than buying a new piece of lumber when I could salvage something from the stack - but sometimes the stack is far far too big.
I use up most of my scrap. "If you don't practice on scrap, you're practicing on your project."
After any adjustment to the router bit, bit height, or fence, I make a quick test cut.
Any time I'm going to cut a dado, a piece of scrap goes through first. Likewise rabbits.
I generally don't trust the depth adjustment on the drill press. I drill a test hole first.
Cutting repetitive pieces? Always try a piece of scrap.
When I'm going to be gluing exotic woods, especially if they're dissimilar I usually do a test glueup with scrap. When gluing cocobolo, ebony, or other difficult-to-glue woods I've settled on a quick sanding with 100-grit paper followed by a swipe with acetone, after doing a number of tests using several techniques.
Whenever I'm going to use an unfamiliar finish I test it on a piece of scrap. This saved me from using a finish on padauk, I think it was wipe-on poly, that bled out the red color from the padauk all over the adjoining piece of curly maple.
I usually keep the test pieces around. They make interesting conversation pieces and remind me of a project that I was fond of.
Very good point... Miniatures jewelry boxes and segmented turnings come to mind..
mac
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