What to do with shorts and scraps?

[Rob Luter]

Like many, I have an abundance of short lengths of stock that are the result of cut offs and such. Most is decent wood and I can't bear to just burn it up. With the price of lumber these days I'd like to use it on something. Any suggestions for fun little projects that utilize smaller pieces of wood?

[Ron Citerone]

I glue it up into strips 3" wide and then plane it. When I have enough I glue them into cutting boards. At some point with too much and too short you gotta give it up.

[Grant Wilkinson]

+1 on cutting boards. I also use them for segmented bowls and "dizzy" bowls like this one.

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[Zachary Hoyt]

I use scraps down to a pretty small size (3/4"x1-1/8"x2" or so) and some thin strips for what I make. I keep a box in the shop for scraps that are too small for my use but too nice to burn in the boiler. Sometimes I pull a piece back out of there when I find I need a little piece for something, and when it gets full I take it upstairs and get a new box. When I have 3 or 4 boxes worth I put them on the Free section on Craigslist and someone always comes and is glad to have them. Often people say they can use some of the pieces and they know people who can use some of the others. When I started buying curly maple from Bell Forest Products I sold all my remaining small scraps of curly maple for $20 so that I could just use the new wood that matches. It took a few days to find a buyer who could use the short or flawed boards I had, but they were happy and so was I. It seems to me that it is good to utilize as much of the wood in a board as possible, even if it's not a money-making proposition.

[Rob Luter]

Good suggestions Zachary. I've thought about reaching out to a local craft guild or other collective that might use the small stuff. Some of the pieces are highly figured. They'd make good material for key fobs, letter openers, pen blanks, knife scales, earrings, and that sort of thing. Someone that does Marquetry could likely use this stuff too.

[Jim Becker]

I'm feeling really sad right now about this topic because I literally just had to "get rid of" 1200 lbs of excess material which included 90% of my "shorts" and cutoffs. The only things I kept were certain exotics and a few other odds and ends...all of which still has to go in storage for awhile until I get a new shop built. I don't like to throw good material out and have found over the years that all those various bits often come in handy...not just for "small projects" but in support of larger ones where one needs "bits" to complete or adjust or embellish. They became even more valuable when I got the CNC because the "flat shorts" were usable for a wide variety of personalized things as well as for utility like custom hold-down fixtures.

So the bright thing here is that I'm really happy that you're asking this question...good material is good material, no matter what the size...and it's far better to be used than head to recycling or the landfill.

[Thomas Wilson]

Whittling! As a kid I bought little cutoffs for carving. I was an idiot about how shops with wood stoves worked.

[Brian Tymchak]

Our local woodworking club cuts scraps into building blocks and donates them to the local Head Start programs.

[Randall J Cox]

What do I do with my off cuts? Right now I have 3 boxes on HF dollies and two 30 gallon barrels full (also on HF dollies) along with lots of other storage. Way too much, on wheels so I can keep moving it around to get it out of the way. Can't bear to get rid of it. Use it when I can. For my true scraps that aren't usable for anything else, take to my cabin and burn in my wood stove. Randy

[Rod Sheridan]

Like many, I have an abundance of short lengths of stock that are the result of cut offs and such. Most is decent wood and I can't bear to just burn it up. With the price of lumber these days I'd like to use it on something. Any suggestions for fun little projects that utilize smaller pieces of wood?

Wood for smoking food if they're nice flavoured wood, or if cedar, make planked salmon.

regards, Rod.

[Stephen Rosenthal]

For pieces that I deem too small or with a defect that prevents reuse, I put a heavy/medium grit on my belt or random orbit sander, attach the dust bag (not shop vac) and create a bagful of sawdust of the same wood. I then empty the bag into glass jars dedicated to that wood. If I need a filler, I mix up a batch and have an exact match for the type of wood I’m using.

Small cutoffs are also useful for creating shims, doorstops, handles and knobs.

[John K Jordan]

Like many, I have an abundance of short lengths of stock that are the result of cut offs and such. Most is decent wood and I can't bear to just burn it up. With the price of lumber these days I'd like to use it on something. Any suggestions for fun little projects that utilize smaller pieces of wood?

I also use them for woodturning. Any woodturning club will likely have turners who do segmented work who would love to have offcuts.
My good friend Frank Penta makes good use of small pieces in woodturnings: http://www.frankpenta.com/index.php/gallery/category/39-laminations-2015?limitstart=0
I knew a guy who made a bunch of cutting boards by gluing up small pieces.

Many turning clubs including ours make pens to donate to active servicemen through Pens for the Troops. I've made many 100s of pen blanks 3/4" square by 5" long for this, often out small pieces of nice woods like cocobolo, zebrano, olive, spalted wood, and burls.

And if you find yourself with more pieces than you can use: I have taken tubs of small and thin offcuts to the art teachers at high schools - a variety of pieces can inspire creativity in students. Even plywood was welcome - I have cut scraps of radiata pine plywood into pieces say 6x6" or so and even young kids LOVE to draw on them with markers. I've taken boxes of those to kindergartners.

This a self portrait my own grandson did when he saw a pile of small squares in the shop and asked if he could draw on one. He said he has fire coming from his feet and lightning from his hands. He was 3 at the time.

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JKJ

[Doug Garson]

I use my shorts and scrap wood to make kid's toys for Christmas toy drives including, toy cars, baby rattles, pull toys, tug boats, stacking cats, wooden building blocks, balance games, Tangram puzzles etc. Almost everything I make starts with pieces less than a foot long.

[Ed Aumiller]

I normally cut them into pen blanks or other sizes that can be turned... give to grandsons for pens or to clubs...
For years made lincoln log pieces for grandsons.... they could fill rooms with buildings and loved them...
Also made building blocks for them... squares, triangles, circles, etc....


Think I will start making them again and give to local organizations that work with small kids!!
Thank you for asking as never thought of doing that until now.....

[David Utterback]

I also hate to throw away something that is potentially useful. However, I do use some scraps for kindling especially narrow pieces from rough cut lumber. I make small boxes with the nicer pieces.

[fred everett]

With me it comes down to the space. I want to keep everything and I initially I do, but I'm eventually forced to get rid on some. However, I get what ya'll are saying as I just used a long thin piece of Sapele that's been in my shop for at least 8 years....it fit as a filler like it was machined as such.

[Richard Verwoest]

Mount them in random configurations on thin plywood. Then sell them to photographers as backdrops.

[John TenEyck]

Good intentions made my shop so cluttered with stacks and buckets of scraps I could hardly move. Now I keep only a couple of buckets. The rest gets given away to friends if they can use it or it goes in the wood stove. At some point you have to be ruthless about getting rid of stuff in order to have enough room to work.

John

[Rob Luter]

Wood for smoking food if they're nice flavoured wood, or if cedar, make planked salmon.

regards, Rod.

I have a big batch of cherry, but I live in the woods and have it growing wild. I have one about to come down that will cover me with smoking chunks for the rest of my life.

[Robert Hayward]

Will not offer any more suggestions but.... From the posts offering suggestions it seems woodworkers all suffer from wood scrap OCD. :) Me included.

[Andrew Seemann]

Two words: Wood Stove. I do have a 2' x 3' x 2' rolling cart I save useful sized scrap in, but that is the strict limit. The rest goes into the stove, fire pit, or maple sap evaporator. I'm fortunate that my pyromania just manages to offset my desire to need to hang on to pieces of wood.

[Rob Luter]

Will not offer any more suggestions but.... From the posts offering suggestions it seems woodworkers all suffer from wood scrap OCD. :) Me included.

Guilty as charged.

[Scott Winners]

I really like Stephen's idea of mason jars of wood dust labelled by species. That is brilliant, and Ed's idea of making more Lincoln logs to go with the existing collection is equally coruscating.

Mostly these days I work in white oak and hickory so the scraps can go straight to my BBQ pits.

[Rob Luter]

I really like Stephen's idea of mason jars of wood dust labelled by species. That is brilliant, and Ed's idea of making more Lincoln logs to go with the existing collection is equally coruscating.

Mostly these days I work in white oak and hickory so the scraps can go straight to my BBQ pits.

I do that now, in a way. I've been working with QSWO that is subsequently fumed and the fuming seems to not penetrate glue joints at splines and dovetails. When an oil and wax finish is applied, any glue and sawdust gap fills stick out. I pre-fumed a bunch of fine sanding dust for color matched patching material. It works great.

Chunks of kiln dried white oak make great wood for the Big Green Egg. I have a whole bucket full.

[Tom Bender]

Here's my offcut rack. It has 5 levels sorted by species, sort of.

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Makes it easier to find the right piece and instills some discipline.

[Robert Hayward]

How many of you are in this category?

[Erik Loza]

Sam Blasco has (or had) a whole interior wall of offcuts in weird radial and flowing patterns in his shop. Really cool and artsy. I think it was just all glued in place.

Erik

[Zachary Hoyt]

I don't have a cart with shelves, but I have stylish cardboard boxes from Aldi which hold scraps that are sorted by species, one each for walnut, African mahogany, curly maple and cherry.

[Jim Becker]

Sam Blasco has (or had) a whole interior wall of offcuts in weird radial and flowing patterns in his shop. Really cool and artsy. I think it was just all glued in place.

Erik

If I'm not mistaken, he carried that theme a little bit into the house he built, too. I remember some photos on social media of some pretty interesting wood treatments.

[Thomas Wilson]

As if they are reading this forum, Fine Woodworking put up an article about marquetry that mentions it is a good use for small scraps. The author saws the scraps down to 1/16 inch veneers.
https://www.finewoodworking.com/2021/06/09/the-art-of-marquetry

[Mel Fulks]

Never worked in a commercial shop that did not have some kind of standard procedure for using up small pieces of good material. Some
would tell a helper to make boxes of a size that had always been a good seller. They were stacked in the office with a cardboard sign with the
price. If there is any sure seller made of wood it’s a box.

[Doug Garson]

How many of you are in this category?
https://sawmillcreek.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=459220&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1623274899
No, my door doesn't have a window. :cool:

[Rob Luter]

A solution has presented itself. It turns out the new guy at work is a bladesmith and always in need of material for knife scales. I stocked him up with some walnut, hickory, oak, cherry, alder, and curly maple. Let’s just say he’s set for the next few years.

[jack duren]

I may have some teak cutoffs...

[John K Jordan]

A solution has presented itself. It turns out the new guy at work is a bladesmith and always in need of material for knife scales. I stocked him up with some walnut, hickory, oak, cherry, alder, and curly maple. Let’s just say he’s set for the next few years.

I've found knife makers are happy to take wood few other people can use. One guy was suddenly speechless when I brought him a box of thin pieces of spalted dogwood, figured maple, holly, osage orange and cocobolo and other exotic woods.

[Justin Rapp]

Well, I used hardwoods for my smoker. But my smoker is in bad shape and needs to be replaced, and with a much smaller model. I am the only one in my house that eats meat now, so I have not lit up my smoker except for thanksgiving to smoke a turkey, which my wife also will eat. So, now i have an entire box of hickory and mixed with some other hardwoods, most of it is just pure burn cutoffs.

So, I have given up on keeping so many scraps and cutoffs unless it's really usable and it's off to the firepit. Just think, in 1 year, you will have another entire pile, or end up with 1200 pounds of it :)

[Ronald Blue]

A solution has presented itself. It turns out the new guy at work is a bladesmith and always in need of material for knife scales. I stocked him up with some walnut, hickory, oak, cherry, alder, and curly maple. Let’s just say he’s set for the next few years.

But next month you will need to find a new bladesmith. Cutoffs and scrap pieces multiply at a rapid rates. A couple pieces today. a bucket full tomorrow, and the corner of the shop next week. What you need is "sterile" wood so it won't multiply....

[Charles Lent]

Cutting boards, snack bowls, etc. are frequently the first use of my drops and off cuts, but you have already received suggestions for them. After making these, I still have many pieces too good, but too small to trash, so I did the following - I got a good scroll saw, and now make small Christmas gifts from those little scraps.

I use pieces of hardwood and Baltic Birch plywood scraps as small as 3/4 X 3/4 X 1 3/4". Here are a few items that I've made. In the past 17 years I have made almost 15,000 reindeer in 4 sizes, and some of the smallest sizes into ear rings, necklaces, and pins. The technique used for these is called "Compound Cutting" to produce the 3-D shapes. A face view is cut first , and then the side view is cut. Then the reindeer or ornament comes out of the center of the block of wood. Kind of a chicken in egg process. It's fun and my hardwood scrap pile, after the scroll saw, is nothing more than small kindling and chips for starting the fires in the fireplace, after this final use of my drops and off cuts. The larger ornaments in the last photo are two almost identical pieces, cut flat, and then one is inserted at 90 deg into the other with a little glue. There are many plan books available for scroll sawing, so it's easy to find patterns to cut. One benefit of cutting 3-D is that your paper patterns that get glued to the wood, all falls off with the scrap, so no clean-up is needed in most cases. Using very fine tooth blades results in no sanding too.
What you see in the photos did not require sanding. Only a lacquer spray finish. For the ornaments, I sometimes sprinkle colored glitter to the wet lacquer. All reindeer get red noses and black eyes, applied using felt marking pens. I used to carry the red marking pen and ask "what is the reindeer's name". If the reply was "Rudolph" I would give him a red nose.

I don't ever charge for these. They are "Gifts". I frequently carry a few during the Christmas Season and give one to any woman who helps me in some way. Doctors, Nurses, sales clerks, waitresses, etc. are all offered one after they have helped me. Very few have refused to accept one. Men are only interested if they are woodworkers or desperate for a gift to give to their wives. I have made several woodworking friends this way though.

Charley

[Vince Shriver]

Thanks for the chuckle, Robert. Very funny.

[Leigh Betsch]

those Christmas gifts are really nice. And the best use I've seen yet.

[George Yetka]

If you are hard up for space and dont use small pieces consider listing them for local pickup. Im sure theres plenty out there that would happily take them.