How do you store your scraps?

[Robert foster]

I have several small pieces of wood that I don't want to throw away. How do you keep yours?

Bob

[Jason Hanko]

For my smaller scraps I store them vertically in milk crates...

[Charles P. Wright]

I have several small pieces of wood that I don't want to throw away. How do you keep yours?

Bob

I have a drawer with the small ones that are regularly shaped. The irregularly shaped ones are in a bucket, that overflows to a pile around the bucket to get burned in the fireplace.

[Chris Brault]

I save em all, if I think they could have a use. I have mine laying flat in attic above shop (there pretty dry so just laying right on top of one another, no stickers) and I've got them sorted somewhat to species and length. I have like a short pyle (6" to 2' approx.) 2' to 4' and 6' through 11',,,,,,,,, don't have much use for anything to much longer than 12',,,,, if I get something longer than that, I'll cut it down into shorter segments. Pretty small shop, don't like the longer lengths.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

I store mine in a 35 gallon plastic trash can that has a lid.

[Dewey Torres]

I have mine all over the place but I am not sure I recommend that approach, albeit somewhat organized.

I have had them in cardboard boxes, old bathroom trash cans, 13 gallon kitchen trash can... hmm I seem to like trash cans...

Here is what I mean

[Larry Fox]

I have mine laying flat in attic above shop (there pretty dry so just laying right on top of one another, no stickers) and I've got them sorted somewhat to species and length.

Ditto here. Really short ones I store in the fireplace.:D

[Derek Stevens]

frankly, I throw nothing away, never knowing if a 1" square of wenge or some such might be a pegged mortise plug or ....well....you never know..... you might need it....
That being said, there is crap everywhere...no real storage other any non-moving flat-ish surface has stuff on it.

[Per Swenson]

This subject stirs much contention in the Casa D'Swenson.
Old Geezer Bob never met a piece of stock that was not savable.
Me? Scrap is scrap and belongs in the dumpster.
So, in order to spare ourselves the pain of daily verbal combat,
we made a bargain. 3 times. If I move something three times,
the 4th time is straight to the dumpster.
Clutter is dangerous in a shop environment.
Saving wood for savings sake is a silly concept.
I call it the use it or lose it program.
I hope this helps.

Per

[Tony Bilello]

I am not big on saving scraps. I save some of the stuff but as soon as the covey holes get full, it's off to the campfire.
My temporary scrap pile is under my Table Saw Outfeed Table.

[Tony Bilello]

These didnt attach because I used them in a different Post. So, I just renamed them.

[Rod Sheridan]

I'm with Per on the throw the bloody junk out. Scraps of stuff everywhere reduces productivity and leads to accidents.

Shop time for me is hobby time, I don't want to spend what little time I have sorting or moving scraps so I can work on a project.

I have a small shelf with turning blanks, a hanging storage rack for 8 foot pieces of rough material, and a 6 inch deep area behind that for sheet goods.

If it doesn't fit in one of those three areas, it's firewood or given away to a friend whose garage is slowly becoming unusable due to my "generosity).:D

Regards, Rod.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

I take an eco-Friendly, Green and highly technological approach to the problem of storing and handling items of dis-similar geometry with varying texture and density.

I have a gravometricly driven processor that manipulates the various geometries and densities and even on occasion accommodates the textural dis-similarities inherent in off cuts and scraps.

First I create them at which point they are affixed loosly to the surface of my Saw by the earth's gravity.

Then as more off cuts are generated the more recent ones move the older off cuts closer to the edge of the saw where finally they are encouraged to over tip their connection with the saw table and yield to the forces of gravity.

They fall to the floor on one side of my saw where I invoke the power of the earth's gravity to hold them in place and even sort them according to size andshape whenever I jostle the pile looking for just the right scrap.

[Frank Drew]

frankly, I throw nothing away, never knowing if a 1" square of wenge or some such might be a pegged mortise plug or ....well....you never know..... you might need it....
That being said, there is crap everywhere...no real storage other any non-moving flat-ish surface has stuff on it.

This was more or less my approach, since I hate to throw away any potentially useful, good looking piece of wood, but in reality Per's system makes much more sense: clutter is not only somewhat hazardous, over time it actually reduces the size of your shop and makes your work much more awkward, having to work around all that accumulated stuff. I only realized this after many years.

That said, if I'd had a separate room or outbuilding available for storage, I'd probably still keep a lot of smaller pieces, because you never know when you'll need just one or two drawer fronts.... :D

[Peter Quinn]

I used t have a nice neat bucket and milk crate system, it was a glorious thing.....for two or three minutes it stayed organized. Now the drops are here, there and everywhere. So I have a fire place and an out door pit, and depending on the season they wind up in one or the other by the thirdish time I have picked them up or so. I go through the piles of crap (oops, I meant scrap) at least twice annually, put every board or piece o wood I am saving in a pile in the middle of the shop and reevaluate "Why the heck was I keeping this and should I still"? When the lumber racks are full, the rest gets tossed, or I install a new rack somewhere, or make room in the garage, or attic, or my wife's sweater closet, and sometimes I actually MAKE something useful from the material that must be used, though this is admittedly rare.

Some pieces have obvious future value, like some crotch walnut cut offs, or some thin strips of blood wood crying out "Inlay me", but it seems the longer i have been holding something generic the less prone I am to keeping it. Wish I had more of the immediate dumpster will power like Per, and less of the hoarding mental defect. I can tell you I have never once burnt something and wished later I had it back.

So now its buckets, plywood boxes, 30 gal garbage cans and random cubbies around the shop, but never anything under foot. I'm clumsy enough without the added obstacles. I find a roll of shrink wrap helps keep smaller bits more organized, and makes it easier to get them to the fire place in one bundle later.

[Jim Becker]

Haphazardly it seems.

I do have a metal can that I put the longer narrow scraps in. Most of them, anyway. I think that the hardest material to store is the wider shorts...not really long enough to efficiently use the lumber rack.

[Sonny Edmonds]

Mine are very organized.
Some here, some there, some that look like firewood (hey, it was too good to burn. So there are turn before burn places)
Oh, and the pen turning blanks in various states of readiness. They reside in the upper yellow drawers of the retired library card file.

http://home.earthlink.net/~pie/images/mess/mess_1.jpg http://home.earthlink.net/~pie/images/mess/mess_2.jpg
http://home.earthlink.net/~pie/images/mess/cyclone_1.jpg

Uhh, told Ya don't ask. :o :p

[Matt Ocel]

I store mine right next to a box marked -

"string to short to use":D

[Joe Jansen]

I was told there is a 12 step program for those of us who can not part with small pieces of wood. Perhaps one could be started on this site.

HTA - hoarding timbers anonymous.

Joe

[Dave Verstraete]

Mine are stored vertically in cardboard boxes. They are thinned out by my nephew when he comes over looking for wood. Eventually they end up in our neighborhood fire pit when we run out of wood at the end of the night (after a few cold ones were downed)

[Andrew Joiner]

I read an article by a pro woodworker who ran the numbers on this. He throws out everything(except full 4x8 sheets) left over after each job!

Time is money and it takes time to look for just the right size scrap on the next job. Space is money and it takes space to store and sometimes heat scraps.

If your a pro it makes sense, but emotionally hard to handle for me. I will save most of mine in 3'x2' bins under my radial arm extension table.

I was a pro cabinetmaker for years,retired,and got back in for a hobby. When I got back into woodworking I actually had a lack of scrap problem! Who wants to cut up a 4x8 sheet to make this or that jig when I knew I'd have a perfect size scrap someday. I once made a huge frame and panel room out of 40 pieces of 18"x3' oak plywood scrap left over from a big job.

I toss bigger scraps of cheap stuff, save tiny scraps of exotic stuff.
On the other hand all Borg hardwood ply I've seen lately goes right to the dumpster,even full 4x8 sheets!

[Karl Brogger]

I don't save anything unless I can immediately identify a use for it later on. I'm a little lazy about this while doing a job, but once it’s over, and the shop gets its thorough cleaning, then most of it goes bye bye.

[Greg Hines, MD]

Useful scraps I store horizontally on my woodrack. The chips and offcuts, go into a milkcrate, and eventually, the woodstove.

Doc

[Frank Drew]

A complete lack of sentiment, on the other hand, leads to a great deal of waste, such as ripping a nice wide board into face frame stock :eek:.

Good wood isn't sheetrock, after all.

[Matt Meiser]

In my mind there is scrap and there are off cuts. Off cuts are small pieces which are of reasonable size to make a project part out of--say a 2'x6" piece or even a long 2" wide piece and sheet goods pieces over say 12x12. Anything else is scrap.

Scrap gets chopped down to about 8" long. I have 2 plastic barrels. All the real wood clean scrap goes in one, anything with any kind of finish, plywood etc goes in the other. The real wood gets used when we go camping for kindling and I give some to friends. The other I burn in our fire ring, but not when we will be roasting marshmallows or hanging around it.

The shorts go in a roll around bin I made from a magazine plan. If it gets full, I sort through it to see if there is stuff that doesn't belong. But since it is reasonably organzied, I do tend to use stuff out of there, and I'm more likely to use stuff out of there for any purpose rather than chopping a piece off a "good" piece of lumber to make a jig, etc.

[David Keller NC]

I used to save most scrap in a 3' x 3' x 4' wooden crate. There was little doubt in my mind that it was useful stuff; after all, they were all cabinet-wood offcuts like cherry, walnut, mahogany, etc.., and they were bigger than the small scraps they sell in the woodworking store as "pen blanks", right?

Then after about 3 years of this (and two more wooden crates full), I finally figured out that this was more emotional reasoning than logical. I got over it and gained a good 20 square feet of extra shop space by storing anything less than 3' long and 4" wide in the woodstove. :)

[Chip Lindley]

I counteract all the laws invoked by Cliff, by chucking waste into the woodstove. Dry hardwood makes fine kindling!! I save all in a plastic barrel thru the summer months and delight in its ultimate use in a warm shop during winter!

(The really good stuff is stored up in the rafters out of the way)

[Joe Von Kaenel]

I save most of my scrap in a plastic bin. When I get several pieces close to the same length I glue and clamp them together. After they glue dries I run the board through my drum sander and put it back in the wood rack. I have actually made small projects with the recycled wood scraps.


Joe

[Anthony Whitesell]

Since I have a basement shop with open floor joists, in addition to no being very savvy at IDing the scrap species, and plentiful access to paper box lids. Here's my solution.

P.S. In case you can't tell, I'm laying on the floor looking upwards.

[Ray Schafer]

OK, that is brilliant.

[Rick Levine]

I store my scraps along side my sheet goods in a cabinet modeled after the one on NYW.

[Ray Schafer]

I want to do the same thing if I can clear out the space for it. That is really great!